Hey, Hey.. It's the Build of the Week - Titled No Sale... No Problem

Ok, so a little over ambitious on my part to have a build of the day... hows about a build of the week. So what if you want to build a machine on a budget but can't find any sales. No problem you just have to know what your looking for and be able to adjust your expectations accordingly. The general rules for building cheap are simple -

1. Buy parts that are within your budget - today we're gonna look at what 500 dollars will buy you.
2. Motherboards are very important - a good motherboard with lots of options can make up for the shortcomings in other parts of your system.
3. Cheap cases are ok, cheap power supplies are not... this is a truism
4. A fast processor is nice, but not necessary; however, being able to upgrade the proc when you can afford it is.
5. A cheap 40 dollar video card is better than integrated graphics any day of the week. This is a truism.
6. Never, ever, ever, ever... put the side of the computer on until after you've booted the computer for the first time. Putting the side on will anger the pc building gods and they will smite you for your arrogance.

Here's my 500 dollar part list... ready... this is an AMD machine...

ECS - A770M-A Motherboard - I like this mobo. 69.99, it supports phenom quad cores... PCI x16, ESATA... onboard realtek sound... this shall certainly get the job done.
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000 Black Edition - 69.99 A perfect compromise betweem price and power. This is the retail edition boxed version of the x2 5K; however, they apparently don't sell it with a fan... which is a bummer... but no prob... we can squeak one out at the end.
Maxtor DiamondMax 21 500GB - Terabyte hard drives are all the rage; however, 500GB is the sweet spot for price/performance/storage capacity. This little OEM Maxtor unit with 16megs of Cache on board will only set us back the tidy sum of 69.99 ;)
HP DVD1070i 20X DVD-Burner - it burns cd's - it costs 39.99... it retail so it comes with the burning and lightscribe software... nuff said.
2 Gigs, PC 6400 DDR2 from Patriot. Patriot makes good stuff... its only 49.99. It goes fast. This will get the job done nicely.
PNY XLR8 8800GT Video Card - PNY makes some good stuff. I use an 8800GT personally, I got mine when they were 300 dollars... this one isn't even half that much coming in at 119.00. These video cards are inexpensive but have high end features. First of all the 8800 GT is based on G92 chipset. It has 512 Megs of memory onboard with a 512 Meg bus controller. That equal performance, power, and running games like WoW at high settings with all the eye candy turned on and games like crysis being very playable at lower resolutions.
Ultra Defender ATX Midtower case with 430 Watt Power supply. Ultra makes good stuff. Your basically paying for the power supply. The case is an extra bonus. It also comes with a 120mm case fan and while not tool free, it certainly looks to have all of the basic features you would want from a standard barebones case.
CPU Fan - el cheapo grande!!! - What the hell were on a budget here. This thing is not going to allow super fast over clocks... be grateful this thing even runs when you plug it in. Not perfect but it will get the job done for now ;)

And our grand total is: Drum roll please............................. $494.92

Tada!!!

This computer will be able to do it all and do it with aplomb. There will be no issues with gaming or word processing. Plenty of power for right now and a rich upgrade path for the future. Scalability is what you need to aim for when your on a budget. I think we've accomplished this nicely. Please leave me your thoughts. L8R