Another budget gaming system - advice needed...

Other than that, good

For the video card, why not get a 7600GT instead of the 6800GS. It's faster and is still below the $200 mark with shipping.

Thanks all the advices.

I know AMD is good value for its performance but I'm always concerned with stability so that I prefered Intel. ...guess I will give AMD some serious thought.

Haven't check the detail difference between 6800GS and 7600GT... but they will be my primary choices. I'm thinking one year or later I could buy a same graphic card to do a SLI as an upgrade. So the price difference between 6800 and 7600 is quite important.

I plan to do the similar thing to Hard Disc, when I have more money I might just buy an identical one to do a RAID0. and maybe dual monitor too.

Ya I think i will go for some really cheap case, and decent if not a very good PSU.

Memory here I'm not sure if I should go for 2x512mb or 1x1gb... again this is for upgrade potential.

I still want some more advice on the mainboard choice. I want a main board that has the latest interface but I'm not sure which one suits my need.

Again thanks for the posts guys.

As far as memory goes, I would go for 2x1GB now. I went with 1x1GB thinking I would pick up another stick soon, but here I am 4 months later with 1 gig. Also, I wouldn't recommend just getting the cheapest case you can find. I think anyone that has some experience working inside computers can tell you that spending the few extra dollars on a decent case is money well spent.

Thanks everyone. I think I'm going to get something close to Bront's suggestion.

Here is my current plan:

CPU
AMD Athlon 3800 X2
Mainboard
Asus A8N-SLI
Monitor
Acer 17" AL1706B LCD
Memory
1024MB TWINX-3200C2 DDR RAM Corsair (2X512MB)
PSU
Power Supply SkyHawk GM-470PC
Graphic Card
eVGA 256-P2-N553-AX Geforce 7600GT
Hard Disc
Western Digital WD1600JS (160 GB 8MB SATAII)

The problem is I'm living in Australia and some products are not widely available here, and most of them cost a bit more than the US price.

Personally, I don't see the point in getting an SLI motherboard with a 7600GT. Most people who know what they're talking about will tell you that unless you add a second card within 3 months, SLI becomes pointless. The reason for that is that new graphics cards are springing up all the time, and the new cards almost always beat two older card in SLI, especially if the older cards are budget ones, like the 7600GT. I'm not sure about this, but I think even a 7900GT, at $300, will beat two 7600GT's in SLI right now. So if you say you want to add another 7600 in a year, you would be better off buying a new card and getting rid of the 7600GT you have.

Well what I'm thinking is, although a better later card will beat 2 old cards, I'd probably need a new mainboard to fully take the new card's advantage (interface). On the other hand one year later the old card is probably very cheap, and there is a good chance to buy a 2nd handed one. Another thing is I never tried to SLI... gonna be kinda cool to do it for the sake of it