Building budget gaming rig for friend. $700-1000. NEED HELP

what would be a good mobo with that setup. It needs to be fairly cheap, but really good for the buck.

Don't stress out too much over selection of parts. Look for balance - like don't spend half your bucks on the graphics card. First off, decide on if you can stretch a bit more, it's good to do it now rather than live with the new box anxious to upgrade. Remember, 1000 is significantly above 700 and so list off everything you have to have:

Case
PS
Mobo
CPU
Ram
Graphics card
Optical drive
HD
Keyboard and mouse
Monitor
OS
Games

etc.

Next, be sure you can't pirate some of the above from an existing system. If you already have monitor, keyboard and mouse, you now have significantly more to spend on the core of the system. Once you have some ideas in mind for mobo and CPU, go to the forums on the manufacturers web sites, here, etc and see if you can find and preferred combinations or conflict problems. Look at what you can get as a complete package online for 1.5 to 2x the price and you may get some good parts combo advice.

While you're at it, shop around. I got great dals on my big rig's parts by just being patient. Some people want to buy it all at once but I spaced it out over about 6 weeks. Don't forget to ask sales people or online stores about rebates, upcoming sales, etc. Compare on ebay. when people see what I paid for my parts, they freak but it was all just finding deals. I probably averaged 20% off of retail.

Patience, Grasshopper, but be ready to jump when a deal arises.

In that price I would agree with all the above posts.

Myself, I would advise a 7800gt for pci express, but according to many other threads the 7900gt may by hitting in the next few days and be at least as cheap, and certainly drop prices on all cards (ati and Nv) so you might wait on a video card yet.

Any amd64 around 3200 or 3500(if can afford it) is rock solid for a system of that level.

I know that newegg has many 2 Gb sets of memory for $100-$150 that would help for bf2.

Definitely go with the asus board mentioned above. Asus rocks.

That is about all I have, stick with the the other advise too and you should do ok.

Hmm i got much to think about. The price needs to be as low as possible. 750 dollars is a prefered amount.

I found this from another post. What do you guys think about this?

Motherboard SUS A8N5X Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Motherboard Price $83.99

Processor AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz HT Socket 939 Price $168

Case Antec LifeStyle SONATA II Piano Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Case 450Watt PSU Price $99.99

Memory CORSAIR ValueSelect 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR400 Price $145.99

Hard Drive Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA 120GB 7200 RPM 8M Price $75

DVD RW NEC Black 16X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW Price$39.75

Video Card XFX 6800 XTreme 256MB PCI Express x16 Price $139

Grand Total $751.72