$350 AM2
Part
|
Model
|
Price
|
Case
|
CPU
|
AMD Sempron 3000+ |
40
|
|
Motherboard
|
Gigabyte M61VME-S2 |
65
|
RAM
|
1GB Kingston DDR2-667 |
74
|
Hard Drive
|
80GB SATA HDD |
55
|
Optical Drive
|
16x Pioneer DVR-111D |
39
|
Graphics Card
|
Onboard from motherboard |
-
|
Sound Card
|
Onboard from motherboard |
-
|
Case
|
Foxconn TSAA805 |
49
|
Power Supply
|
Included with Case |
-
|
Cooling
|
- |
-
|
Additional
|
- |
-
|
Total Cost
|
- |
322 + Postage
|
Some people are on a limited budget, and want a nice basic desktop for Internet use and the like. This machine should be fine for basic tasks. This system, a cheap keyboard/mouse, a copy of Vista Basic or XP Home and a secondhand 17" CRT would provide a nice basic machine for just over $500.
$500 AM2
This is a fairly good base system. Whilst primarily a 'work machine', you could possibly do some light gaming due to the onboard GeForce 6150 on the M2NPV-MX . It also features 1GB of RAM which is sufficient to run just about anything except for intense games xD. The case isn't too bad, its cheap but not sore on the eyes. You can have a look at it by clicking on the link.
With the recent AMD price drops, it has become worthwhile to include a dual-core CPU in this system. It could use 2GB of RAM, though.
$750 Core 2 Duo, Workstation
With a Core 2 Duo CPU and 2GB of RAM, this machine is a very quick workstation.
$1000 Core 2 Duo, Entry-Level CAD Machine