Alright, we've taken advice and deals on newegg into account and we've come up with this:

ASUS P5N73-AM LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 7050 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - $60

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 - $170

G. Skill (2x2gb) DDR2 800 - $70

and a power supply video card combo deal that includes:

EVGA GeForce 8800GT

hec ZEPHYR HEC-750DR-AT 750W together for $245

Does all this sound good and in order, and will they all play nice together without a hitch?

We're ready to press that ship to button as soon as possible :)

Thanks for the help guys. Some really good stuff here. I keep hearing Crossfire though, but I know nothing about it? Care to shed some light?

Thanks again.

Hey guys, I used to build PCs for a period of about 5-6 years, but it's been about 2 since I've built a PC. My roomate wants a new gaming PC on the cheap.. budget = $500. Were poor college students these days :/ Anyway he doesn't need a case, monitor, keyboard, mouse, or speakers. Just the essentials.

Like I said I haven't kept up on the latest and greatest so help would be useful. I know DDR3 is out, but don't know much about it. Do people still go with 7200 RPM SATA drives? Whats the best video card for this budget? I was an AMD guy back in the day, but I hear Intel has the edge now? Quad or dual? Vista or XP? Etc. Help please!

Thanks.

need some help. I finally got Vista Home Premium to install and now for some reason there is no output for sound. any suggestions.drdrillnfill