low budget system.

i need some help thinking of parts for a low budget system for my brother and sister. im sick of fixing there crappy 733mhz celeron.
i dont want to spend over $500 aus. all it has to do is be able to use the web, school projects and some light gamming.
im fine at putting togeather high power systems but there is so much budget equment to look at.

thanks

 

A cheap Sempron, 3000 ? Geforce 6200 Turbocache, cheapest motherboard you can find, salvage other parts like HDD's optical drives from the old machine and a decent 350W antec/tagan/silverstone (etc) quality psu.

Oh, and some ram.. 512mb - 1gb will do.

Sorted

 

ok this is what i have come up with. if there is any stupid mistakes its probly becuase its 1:15am at the moment.
cpu: AMD Sempron 3000+ AM2 Retail Box 64bit $115
http://www.pcmaniacs.com.au/product_info.php?products_id=3048
mb: Gigabyte GA-M51GM-S2G AM2 $131
http://pcmaniacs.com.au/product_info.php?cPath=32_205&products_id=3056
gc: Powercolor X300 SE 128MB $44
http://www.itestate.com.au/products_detail.asp?code=PD00003907
ram: Desktop DDR2 Ram Generic 1GB PC4200 533MHz $104
http://www.itestate.com.au/products_detail.asp?code=PD00003726
dvd: DVD-RW Samsung 16x Dual Layer (OEM with software) Beige $44
http://www.itestate.com.au/products_detail.asp?code=PD00003399
total: $438

 

Everything looks fine, good idea going AM2, that way you've got a decnt upgrade path.

 

cool now i just have to try to get some money out of my bro and sis.

 

I agree with Fr4nt the ability to create a "path" to upgrading and it will increase the lonngevity of the system as well as saving you more money you will save over the years and of course with the phasing out of socket 939 the AM2 is the choice to make and though you may not get all you can out of the DDR2 memory it is a step in the right direction and allowing a system that is on a budget but as close as you can some to the market leaders in computer terms. Overall a set of well chosen components will make a pretty sweet PC for your budget.... nice finds...

 

AM2 is indeed the best route. Olly, you may want to work on breaking your points up into concise sentences - those four lines are a serious run-on sentence, which is difficult to read. The purpose of punctuation, after all, is to divide words up into managed chunks. However, you hit the nail on the head.

 

thanks guys AM2 does look like the way to go.

 

ok i changed the graphics card to
Sparkle Geforce 6200TC 256MB
http://www.itestate.com.au/products_detail.asp?code=PD00002558