Low budget Gaming PC

[Sackboy]

Hi
I have a friend who is currently oversees, and wants a quote, in SA, for a gaming PC, He wants this to compare the prices of components where he is, (india) to ours. and make the purchase there if necessary. His budget is $400.
This is the best I could come up with but its like twice his budget, any help, PS: prices are from prophecy and PCint

Processor: Intel Core2 Quadro Q8200 - quad core 2.33ghz- If its too expensive get the Core 2 quadro Q6600 (its older but good) approximate price in SA R2000

Motherboard: Asus P5K SE/EPU ( Note that the motherboard has to support the processor in the case of the Q8200, it is 45nm processor, and the Q6600 is 65nm) be-careful, which motherboard you choose. approximate price in SA R1200

Graphics Card: Nvidia GeForce 9800GT (any brand, but the good brands are: Asus, Gigabyte, MSI and XFX my recommendation would be to go for ASUS as a brand.) This graphics card is the minimum you should get to play all the new games at good graphics. Better cards are the 9800GTX or the newer GTX-200 series. Approximate price of 9800GT in SA is R1700 (remember motherboard must be able to support it.

RAM: Kingston ValueRam KVR800D2Nx/2G , 2Gb/2048mb ddr2-800 (Any DDR2-800 is good, best would be 1x 2Gb module and a 1x1Gb module. ( Remember XP 32 bit does not support more that 3GB of Ram. Total price for RAM in SA approximately R500

Hard Drive: Seagate or Western Digital hard drive ( 500Gb is good enough) I recommend : "seagate barracuda 7200.12 st3500418as , 500gb, s-ata2 , 7200rpm" Any SATA hard drive (SATA 1 2 or 3) will do. Again remember that The motherboard must have a SATA port. Approximate Price in SA is R700. 1.5 times the size of the HD

Power supply: This system will not use too much power so a 400W-500W power supply will be the maximum you'll need. But make sure its a good brand. Recommended brands are (coolermaster, thermaltake, isonic, antec, vantec, gigabyte, zalman, enermax,omega and corsair.) any one of them will be perfect. Approximate Price in SA R500

Case: Approximate price without power supply in SA is R300

Other Requirements: DVD writer KB, mouse, Windows XP and screen,( he has all of these)
Total approximation in South Africa: R6900

Thanks for the info.
What about the screen? Things have changed since I last priced a system. 3 Years ago, I managed to price the whole thing at around R16k.

 

[zakdoc89]

Thanks for the info.
What about the screen? Things have changed since I last priced a system. 3 Years ago, I managed to price the whole thing at around R16k.

Any idea if an AMD system of similar performance will be cheaper, I'm not quite sure how the AMD cpu components work, How do They compare to Core2Duo Quadcore i7 etc.

 

[Synaesthesia]

AMD doesn't have anything as fast as Core i7 (highest end) otherwise their stuff is basically the same price/performance as Intel.

 

[Chevron]

AMD doesn't have anything as fast as Core i7 (highest end) otherwise their stuff is basically the same price/performance as Intel.

That's basically right except for the tri cores. They are currently the sweet spot at the moment for gaming.