Well im taking on a new build for my brother. He asked me to put a price on an entire new setup with all the hardware including the monitor, speakers, and mouse/keyboard and the OS and software all priced together. I managed to come up with (what i think) is a fairly decent system for around 1000. Since I have not done an entire system recently (just upgraded mine when it was needed) I didn't realize how much a good system costs these days. It also makes me wonder how the name brands like Dell, Compaq, HP, and others get their prices so low. They must be putting the cheapest components they can in theirs. It would be nice if most people would realize that the only thing they are buying that is Dell, HP, etc.....is the case. Everything else is cheapo crap for the most part.

I figure since you guys have been doing this way longer than me you could give me some pointers on the hardware. Here is a list of the parts I have been considering. My only real requirement is that it has to be close to or less than 1000.

Case CoolerMaster Centurion 5 CAC-T05 Black with side window $59.99

Motherboard Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX $119.99

Power Supply Corsair CMPSU-550VX 550 Watt ATX 12v $99.99

CPU Intel E7400 Wolfdale 2.8Ghz LGA775
$119.99

Memory G-Skill 2GB (2x1 GB) 240 Pin DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) $34.99

Graphics Card HIS H467QT512P Radeon HD4670 IceQ Turbo 512MB$74.99

Hard Drive Western Digital Caviar SE 320GB 8mb Cache 7200RPM SATA 3.0$49.99

DVD Drive Sony Optiarc Black DVDR/RW 24x/8x/12x
$26.99

Keyboard/Mouse Logitech LX 710 Laser Black USB
$64.99

Monitor Acer X223Wbd Black 22" Widescreen 5ms
$149.99

Speakers Creative Inspire T3100 2-Way with Subwoofer
$49.99

Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3 OEM $89.99

Virus/Firewall ESET Smart Security 1 year subscription $59.99
Total
$1,001.87