Building on a budget

[arfy4]

So, though I'm still slightly debating between waiting till the end of the year and getting a laptop, I have $500 to spend and am trying to find a way to build something with reasonable power on that budget. I'd be hoping for something that is both powerful enough to play games like Portal 2 and maybe Just Cause 2 and GTA 4 if possible and that I can upgrade to something much better as I get more money. I'm kinda leaning towards building rather than buying a laptop at the moment, because I really don't play games to much when I'm not at home anyways, but I'm only gonna build if I can find something that's appealing enough to me for me to want to bother spending the money. So, does anyone have any suggestions?

[One_Medic_Army]

Budget build you say?
Sounds like a job for AMD chips.

Do you already have a monitor/keyboard/mouse? Those will take a good chunk out of the $500 if not.

[arfy4]

Keyboard monitor and mouse can be easily taken care of without spending money out of the budget I have for building, I just need to figure out a low priced but upgradeable build.

[MrBlah]

http://www.tinyurl.com/FalconGuide

[Eggers]

I whipped up a quick build for you on Newegg. Its close to the $500 mark but its hard to get everything in for that price including a legal copy of windows ($100 alone).

Here goes:

Motherboard
ASRock MicroATX Mobo with USB 3 and a SATA 6 port
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813157326

CPU
Intel 2.9 GHz Sandy Bridge Dual-Core 65w
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819116397

Power Supply
Generic Rosewill 350w
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817182006

Video Card
HIS 6750 1gb 128-bit
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814161379

Hard Drive
WD Blue 1tb
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822236339

Memory
8gb (2 x 4) Ripjaws G.Skill Memory
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820231314

Case
Antec 300 Black
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811129042

Disk drive
ASUS Generic (The one I use, works great)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6827135204

Windows
The OS
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6832116986

This system should be able to get you through pretty well. Its not super upgradeable but its somewhat future proof thanks to USB 3.0 ports. I guess you take what you can get for only $500. Hopefully this helped some. NOTE: I haven't done any extensive research on these components so do you own and make sure they're what you're looking for. Also make sure they go together correctly as I was being fairly hasty.

Total Price: $535

[Boss Llama]

I love build-on-a-budget challenges!

Eggers makes some great suggestions, and my initial build included a lot of duplication of his. In the interest of providing options, here's an alternative that hops up to an Ivy Bridge CPU and a rock solid PSU. It's $520 before MIRs, $480 after.

Mobo: ASRock H61M-DGS $45
CPU: Intel G2120 22nm $100
RAM: 8GB G. Skill DDR3 1066 $35
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB WD5000AAKX$70
Video Card: Gigabyte HD 6670 1GB 128-bit $70 (not counting $20 MIR)
Power Supply: Corsair CX500 500 Watt[ $50 (not counting $20 MIR)
Case: Antec 300 $40
Optical: Lite-On DVD Burner $18
OS: Win 7 Home Premium 64-bit $100
Monitor: Not needed
Keyboard: Not needed
Mouse: Not needed


For another option, which emphasizes CPU and GPU, at cost of weaker supporting equipment, there's a pre-arranged combo for $488 that isn't terrible, link here.