New Budget Gaming Box

We've seen how you can spend $1,200 and get a nice gaming box. Unfortunately, not everyone has $1,200 laying around to blow on a computer.

A friend of mine, whom I play Quake with, had his computer melt down this weekend. He's sent it to me to fix, but he told me that he wants to build a backup computer. Something he can game on if he has to, and something that his wife can use the rest of the time. He's also not rich, so money has to play a role. He asked me to put together a "spare" computer for around $500-$600. I think he'll be surprised with what I've come up with.

<b>Processor</b> - AMD Athlon XP 1900+ should be plenty fast (and, actually, faster than what he currently has). I still like AMD's a whole lot and I'm super familiar with them (as a matter of fact, I just put together another Athlon 1600+ box last night). <i>Price - $98 in retail box</i>

<b>Motherboard</b> - Asus A7N266-VM. It's an nForce based board with integrated GF2MX video, sound and ethernet. Now, the video's mostly useless, but it's good to have in case we need it. <i>Price - $84</i>

<b>Case</b> - Enlight 76020B1. I'm not in a position to be picky here. It's Micro ATX, it has a 300 Watt power supply and it's ugly as all hell. But it's cheap and should do the job quite nicely (no inverted PSU, etc). <i>Price - $45</i>

<b>Video Card</b> - Crucial Radeon 8500 LE 128MB. This card actually outperforms a GeForce 3 Ti500 at Quake3. Nice. <i>Price - $123</i>

<b>Hard Drive</b> - IBM 40GB 120GXP. Shut up. Just shut up. I don't need to hear it. 40GB should be sufficient for a back-up computer. <i>Price - $72</i>

<b>Memory</b> - Kingston 512MB PC2100. It's not Crucial, but it's still got a lifetime warranty. I'm sure it'll be just fine. <i>Price - $119</i>

<b>CD-ROM</b> - Sony 52X CDU5211. We just need something to get the operating system installed. <i>Price - $24</i>

<b>Total</b> - $565. Not too bad for what we're getting. Not too bad at all.

However, it may be too much for some folks. Perhaps you don't <b>need</b> 125fps at Q3 and you can live with a slower processor. Great! We can save some money. First, we'll replace the Athlon XP 1900+ with a 1700+ at a savings of $22 ($98 - $76). Then we'll put in a 64MB Radeon 8500 LE (which will still give some very respectable Q3 performance) for $88, a savings of $35. That brings our total to $508. Nice!

You can save even more by putting in a GeForce2 GTS 32MB DDR card (will still play Quake very well) for $47, a savings of $41. Grand total? $467!

In any of the incarnations I've presented here, this is still a very capable gaming box - yet the price wouldn't have you believing that.

Now, before Xugamad chips in that he can get everything cheaper - yes, I know. I've just dealt with the fly-by-night businesses enough to know that I'm tired of dealing with them. NewEgg has provided me with great customer service for the past year and I don't see that changing. So I'm happy to give them some business.

Anyway, that's the dealie for this box. High-end performance, low-end price. The best of both worlds.