Budget PC Build

[BALISTX]

My sister asked me to price out a system no more than $500 before taxes to replace her aged Dell desktop that is about 3 years old.

She will mainly be using this for surfing the net, word processing, burning movies and her husband will use it for some light gaming.
Out of her old system we are keeping the new DVD-RW drive she bought, her keyboard and mouse and 20" LCD wide screen monitor. Everything else is going.

So here is the system I came up with. Prices are from Direct Canada.

Intel Pentium Dual Core E2180 2.0GHz Processor - $88.40
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L Motherboard - $88.76
Corsair XMS2 2GB PC2-5400 DDR-667 Memory - $45.74
XFX GeForce 8500GT 500MHz 256MB 128-bit Video Card - $86.43
Western Digital Caviar 250GB SATA2 Hard Drive - $67.60
Antec Sonata III Black ATX Case w/500W Power Supply - $106.53

Sub Total: $483.46
Insurance: $7.25
GST 5%: $24.54
Shipping: Free Ground
Total: $515.25

[1Tanker]

What about OS?

[BALISTX]

Got that covered already. Windows XP SP2

[CasheKicker]

Have yo considered Kijiji.

Could be able to find a bargain used PC in your area.

[BALISTX]

I'd rather build new than buy used.

[MacJunky]

May I ask why you are ditching the old case? Keeping it could save you some money if it is usable.

[BALISTX]

It's a mATX case with really poor cooling and airflow

[MacJunky]

/me gets out the drill and dremel?

[Babrbarossa]

Check this out- 499 for a computer Q6600, 680i, corsair pc26400 memory- just need to save up for a little GPU

[MpG]

Looking like a fairly solid system for the price, although any improvements to the GPU will definitely make a difference for its game-ability. $40 more dollars would also double your HDD capacity, but if the budget is fixed, I guess you work with what you can.

You don't seem to have a CPU heatsink listed (neither does that TigerDirect system, for that matter) - using the box cooler? Even an inexpensive AC7 cooler would be a big improvement in either cooling or noise level.