Since Windows on it's own can take up 20% of the budget, I wonder what we can do to get a fair gamer machine for 500 what if we take a nice enough desktop and add a nice enough card.
As to the display, do you have that?
Here's a refurb, ready to use for gamers at 499. http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=DX4320-17-FB-R&cat=SYS
Idea:
My 14 year old son is studying computer engineering in high school, (a 'charter' school here in Delaware). Centuries ago I built pc's for family and friends and my son grew up in this environment. The last pc I built featured a state-of-the-art AMD 900 Tbird cpu, giving you some idea of how long it has been. His birthday and Christmas are 12 days apart and the only thing he wants for both is a 'budget' to build his own pc. So my questions are: Is it reasonable to expect a successful build and is $500 a reasonable budget. Keep in mind that currently he's using an aging Dell Dimension 521 so anything will be a step up. My son has been on the honor roll since conception and he is very tech savy and mechanically inclined. I am a single father on a budget.....

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