Hello, first off - I'm new to the forums, so hi, nice to meet you all! ^.^

I've had my old computer now since 2003 - At the time it was pretty decent.
AMD 64 3000+ 2.4ghz
1gb PC3200 Ram
Geforce FX 5500 Video card
x2 120gb Harddrives
17" CRT Flat Screen Monitor.

Anyways, my friend just recently built a new rig, setting him back about 2,600 dollars...I don't have the kind of cash so I decided that my build should have the best performance per dollar ratio. I think I've build a pretty solid system but I'd like some advice, so any suggestions or anything would be greatly appriciated! Thank you for time!

Here we go:
Motherboard: ECS 770 ATX (AM2/AM2+)

Hard Drive: Western Digital 160gb SATA 3gb/s 16mb cache 7200RPM

Video Card: EVGA Geforce 8600GT 512MB GDDR3 PCI-Xpress 16

Memory:2gb DDR2 SDRam (PC6400) GieL

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 x2 5200+ 2.7ghz Dual Core

Case: Cool Master ATX Mid-Tower

PSU: Cooler Master eXtreme 500W

Monitor: Hanns-G 19" 5ms LCD Widescreen monitor

DVD/CD: Sony NEC Optiarc 20x DVD+/- R DVD burner

That is the general build I designed for about 850 dollars.
If there are any suggestions as I said, I would be happy to hear them; I don't mind switching to Intel if need be - as long as the price stayed remotely the same. Thank you again for all of your help!

Kurono

Ok here are the only two issues I see one is the motherboard. I would go with either ASUS, Biostar, or Gigabyte and I would never use Western Digital drives they are crap. Also you could save a couple of bucks if you switched to a lite-on dvd burner.

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Ubuntu 8.04.1

Gnome 2.22.3

WD drives are crap my ass!

what do you reccomend , maxtor ???

dont change the western digital drive ... ive had lots of drives fail on me , but only one western digital ... rock solid drives

and if your willing , id go with an intel based system , as they offer more performance

sorry Dr. computer but DB6150 gets my vote on this one. all my HDDs are western digital and they work like a charm. but instead of going with a 160GB why dont you move up the ladder to a 250GB HDD. i have gotten an SATA Hardrive for 70$ and it was 250gig. very easy to find, amazon,ebay,google. this way if you want to partition your disk you can have more room. Note* make sure you have the right controllers and make sure that you comp is compatible with SATA and not SCSI. that happened to me recently and i got stuck with a drive that was scsi and i had a sata controller. good luck!

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What is a physical body. The body is merely an object. It is a form of existence far too impure to store the gods within us called souls. Now you will remember. The bloodstained history. Material desire. Hunger. Sexual Drive. Desire to dominate. Desire for fame. Humanity. As long as there is a body, desires will be born. The human ego will never disappear as long as desire remains present. Humans will continue to fight to fulfill their bodies desires and it will never end. At this rate there is no future.

and the 250Gb has the larger 16mb cache