Well, my suggestion would be the Gigabyte GA-8IHXP, 512MB of PC1066, a Chieftec case/power supply from Newegg, three Western Digital 80MB drives (8MB cache) with two in RAID0 for storage and one by itself for OS/programs, a Radeon 8500DV, a CDRW, a DVD-ROM, and any external peripherals you need (mouse, keyboard, speakers, monitor). That should be around $1200, you can get the fastest P4 available with what's left.
Of course a Dual Channel DDR board (one with the Granit Bay or SiS 655 chipset) would give you the same performance for less money. In fact, 1GB of RAM might then fit into your budget.
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