Monitor, keyboard & mouse included or just the rig ? For gaming or just a family machine/work station ? Well there is a lot of thing that you can built with 500 bucks, a lot of configurations. These are my choices Tower: Antec Three Hundred Black PSU: COOLER MASTER Silent Pro M600 Board: GIGABYTE GA-H55M-S2V CPU: ntel Core i3-540 or Pentium G6950 Mmory: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB Graphic: SAPPHIRE HD4650 HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 DVD: ASUS DRW-24B1ST It should be perfect
Are you playing any games on it? If your not there is no need for the GFX. Also a 380 watt Antec will be loads of power if can get one.
Here's another quote from the hardware buyer's guide I'm still currently writing ^^; This time it's from the builds section. I haven't refined the builds thoroughly yet, but this should give you a rough idea of what's possible. If you do not consider the monitor and OS as part of your budget then a decent <$500 build is definitely possible (the build as it is right now is like $440 so you could upgrade something with the extra $60 too). off topic: btw murraynt you have a typo in your sig "Zalman X10 Quite" should be "Quiet"
Even with a monitor and the OS its possible, in that case you will have a s775 (Like a e5400) WIndows XP & something like a Asus 22''. It will be respectable for a family Pc/Work Stations.
I have seen some great deals on ebay if you have not looked before. That is if you would consider buying off of it.
I wouldn't suggest a 775 build to someone unless there was a good reason for it (e.g. they really don't need a 1155/1156 build, they're on a tight budget, and they're driven by necessity). In the OP's case I'm not sure what his specification for building is so I'm assuming the generic no monitor, no OS build for $500 which would be an AM3 or 1156 platform with integrated graphics. In my opinion, especially with SB filtering back into the market, a 775 build doesn't have too much future potential any more and so should be a low usage/shorter term build suggestion. It's a great cheap alternative in the right circumstance, but if the builder is going for 775 just because it's cheap I'd tell them to wait and save $200 to get an AM3 platform at least (even though AM3 is going out soon too).
I don't think I can agree with that, s775 is still worth and it's an euphemism. If we forget Pentium 4 and Preslers, both Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad & New Pentiums can rock everything. As comparation you have 2 car, a Jaguar XF (I7 850) and a Audi A6 (E8400 Oc), would you spit on the Audi just because she have a 4.2TT 40v instead of a V8 5.0 L ? If it's work fine, it's still good.
How about using something like AMD Phenom II X4 840... Would that be a better performance and overall deal over intel's i3-540?
Bettter in multi threaded worse in single and you'd need to get a discrete graphic card. If this is just for the office/web then a i3 540, if you want to do some gaming then an AMD 3 duel core 555 black + best GPU you can afford
