Originally Posted by JGordon

This is a pretty good setup, but the processor/heat sink combo looks like an overclocking combo. You could do just the plain AMD Athlon XP 2500+ with the retail fan.

That saves you ~$30 you don't need to spend. The Motherboard, RAM, and Hard Drive are all fine. I personally prefer Western Digital Hard Drives to Maxtor, but it's really not a big deal.

As for a video card, I would suggest the ATI Radeaon 9600XT. A good upper-midlevel card.

If you have a little more money to spend, get the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. For about $50 more, you get a significant boost in performance.

If you want to keep some of the all-in-wonder capabilities, i think getting an add-on Video input solution is more cost-effective than the new ATI All-In-Wonders. Leadtek makes a good value card. My buddy just got one and runs a VCR and cable TV into his PC monitor, and it runs like a champ.

I'm currently running an Athlon XP 2500+(overclocked to 3200+ specs) with a Radeon 9600XT and 1 gig of Corsair PC-3200 ram. I can run most games with good detail, and even DOOM 3 (by far the most graphically advanced game on the market) runs fine on medium settings at 800x600.

Arg. I'm trying to add links to Newegg on this, but their server seems to be running RRREEEEEALLLLYYYY slowly. I'll add them in if I can ever get on.