taking another look at building a desktop for myself

[joshthor]

well lately ive been thinking about building a desktop for gaming, my laptops nice, but i have to settle with med/low settings to get a decent framerate. however, while i want nice settings, i also want a very cheap computer. so, here are the parts ive been looking at.

Raidmax Smilodon with 500w power supply-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811156098

500gb hdd-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136178

Radeon HD 4850-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121272

2gb Dominator 1066-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145043

Motherboard (780g and Phenom 9600)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.144174

this system costs $430 after rebates, which is very cheap. the reason i chose phenom over a core 2 quad is because though the core 2 quad is superior, i dont think its worth the extra $70, plus i got a nice combo deal with the motherboard. I chose 2gb of ram cause generally im only using 1.4gb of ram anyway on my current computer. the 500gb hdd is a nice amount of storage for cheap. and the gpu is the best price performance i have found.

I (not really me, but my dad) has 3 copies of windows xp media center edition. would there be any problems gaming wise or even just general use wise, using media center edition? i kinda dont wanna pay an extra 100 for vista, and i dont really need dx9. thoughts on this?

any suggestions for my build? i wanna keep it below 500 bucks, i want a build thats cheap as possible while still being good.

 

[Proximon]

You are doing pretty good on this. Media Center is just like XP and will work fine.

The only place you really fall down is the power supply. NEVER buy a PSU with a case unless it's Antec

This is more power than you need, but the price is right, free shipping, and it will last you a long time:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817703005

Choose your case cooling first then looks.

That's too much money on RAM. It doesn't do that much for you.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227189

 

[joshthor]

ok sweet. the reason i chose the ram was because it has a 30 dollar mail in rebate and will cost 15 dollars after it.

 

[Proximon]

If you mail the rebate off and wait a few months, ya ... maybe. If they get to it.

 

[joshthor]

i looked it up a little bit, corsair seems fine with rebates. i also switched to a 4830 (50 dollars less and is better than a 9800gt in the games i play), a different case, and a 500 watt power supply, so my total drops to 400 dollars. lol. this is looking to be a very cheap build