Very very budget system

I currently have an Elderly system at home that I use for gaming.
P4 2.8 prescott
2gigs of ddr1
MSI neo mb
ATI Firegl X3-256
and assorted IDE/SATA drives

Actually still works surprisingly well. I'm running into a wall at shader model 2/3 now though.

I'm looking at going back to school for my bachelors, so I'm going to need/want some new stuff. From the reading I've been doing Intel chips are way outshining AMD's efforts, and the phenom I's might as well be a doorstop. Friend of mine gave me a 8800 GT or GTS, either way an improvement over my old Fire.

specced out a system on newegg,

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128392
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103648
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820144266
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817152028

I'm taken care of in the case/monitor dept.
All my classes will be online. And I'm not sure yet on what kind of grants I will get, depending on those, I may re-spec to an intel based machine. Probably in the 5-600 range if I get my grant wishes answered. Are the intel setups (probably not i7 too much $$$ most likely) that much better that I should avoid the amd chips until they grow up a bit more again?

Your build is far superior to the $600 Toms build, even if you're going to overclock the snot out of the E5200 CPU that's in the $600 build. Your one weak spot is the Raidmax power supply. Raidmax makes very poor quality power supplies, go with this Corsair instead. It has lower watts, but is fine for your system along with the graphic card your friend gave you.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817139008

I'm not familiar with the RAM you picked, just make sure you do your research on it.

Thanks for the replies, I'm way out of the loop hardware wise. Last PC I actually built was my current machine when the prescotts were new. Been aggravating as heck trying to re-learn all the socket/ram combos.


I kind of figured the raidmax was on the cheep side. Usually low cost+ lights=cheese. I'll get back to doing research.