Q: I already got a good 24bit sound card from creative. I also already got a decent monitor, mouse, and 5.1 speakers that im taking from my old computer. my old pc used agp, and ata, so I can't save anything from within the computer except the dvd burner. I'm also going to still use my copy of windows xp pro. Screw Vista. With 600$ how good of a computer can I built? I will run my games at only 1280x1024 resolution for its my monitors native resolution. Which might be a plus to my performance in games since newer monitors use a higher resolution. I love FPS, although most of mine are a little older such at UT 2004. I play a lot of world of warcraft, which I know should also not be a problem. I'm however maybe going to buy Unreal Tournament 3 (because the games only 20$ now), even though its not as good at the other ones.
A: For $600 you can make quite a respectable computer, especially since you already have the monitor, speakers, DVD burner and OS. A reasonable CPU on a reasonable motherboard with reasonable RAM, a reasonable hard drive, topped off with a reliable power supply and a good graphics card would do nicely. e.g. ASUS AMD 770 board/Athlon X2 5000+/2GB DDR2-800/Radeon 4850 graphics/500GB HDD/600W power The Intel CPUs are better, but the motherboards are a little weaker. I'd probably opt for Intel, to be honest.