WoW! Can't believe I've never noticed this before! Nice job!
Was just thinking, how about adding some info on companies that specialize in "pick and choose your own custom pc" builds? it's an option to consider if you want that
custom build feel but don't know how to or want to bother with building it yourself.
www.cyberpowerpc.com is one that I know of.
They offer a decent
budget build for roughly $670 USD and consists of (most of which can be upgraded or downgraded) plus a 3 year standard warranty :
CASE: ($20 off Mail-in Rebate) Xion III Gaming Mid-Tower 420W Case with Side Window (BLACK COLOR)
CPU: (Socket AM2) AMD Athlon™64 X2 4800+ Dual-Core CPU w/ HyperTransport Technology
MOTHERBOARD: (Socket AM2)MSI K9N4 SLI-F nForce 500 SLI Chipset DDR2/800 SATA-II RAID MBoard w/ Dual 16x PCI-Express
MEMORY: (Req.DDR2 MainBoard)1GB (2x512MB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory (Mushkin Xtreme w/ Heat Spreader)
VIDEO CARD: NEW !!! NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB PCI Express x16 (Major Brand Powered by NVIDIA)
VIDEO CARD 2: NONE
LCD Monitor: NONE
HARD DRIVE: Single Hard Drive (250GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 8MB Cache 7200RPM HDD)
Data Hard Drive: NONE
Optical Drive: (Special Price) 18X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER (BLACK COLOR)
Optical Drive 2: 16X DVD ROM (BLACK COLOR)
SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
You also get bundled stuff such as internal media card reader, Keyboard & Mouse, Software, speakers and other stuff you don't normaly get when building your own custom built PC. Now thats a decent X2 4800+ AM2 PC with a Geforce 7600GT & 3 year warranty for less than the price of the custom budget build you have listed. You get everything but a monitor with this setup.