Girl Friend is going off to college and she want it cheap but good. So here we go.... and she would like it to last all 4 years of college. Antec Mini P180 (She likes this case. got any other ideas just comment on what to use) ASUS M4A78-EM AMD Athlon X2 7850 2GB of 667 DDR2. (might go 4 GB of 800 DDR2, what do you think?) Western Digital Caviar SE - 250GB OCZ ModXStream Pro - 400W PSU (Will this be enough?) Asus 8500GT (Had it laying around, should I use this or just use on board chip?) Microsoft Windows Vista x64 - (will 2GB do or would 4Gb of ram be better?
Looks good. I would say for readability, personal experience and live scenarios from friend that ASUS motherboards is no good. So, if you are in Canada, no ASUS, else you should be fine and have good service. 4GB of RAM is the minimum, I say for the best system experience without worrying of upgrades. 800MHz RAM is welcome as well. I would go with Win7 64-bit instead of Vista 64-bit, especially that it comes out in 5 months (October). You can put here Win7 RC until the final version gets released.
Increasing the HDD to a 500GB should be rather cheap, and will serve well in the long run. 1TB is also an option. Depends on how many stuff she has... The 400W PSU will definitely be enough. You might want to look at the non modular version - Neat cable management > Modular in most cases. Will slice off quite some $$ off too. A dedicated GPU is definitely better. P.S. GoodBytes - 2GB is definitely sufficient. I could game on 2GB on Vista with a 8400GS... Using an ASUS mobo myself, no problems. You might want to chuck in a cheap sound card, but not really necessary... And yes, Win7 is better.