[Warhaven]

Ok, I'm helping my friend build a new gaming system. He had a US$1000.00 budget, and we're a little bit over (like $40.00 over). So, he's looking for an affordable case to house all of his equipment in. Something in the $30-60 range - i.e. nothing fancy.

Any suggestions?

Here's his equipment list:

$159.00 | 2 GB RAM | http://www.ms4me.com/oem2gb22sttr.html
$159.99 | ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard | http://www.newegg.com (1-day sale, $100 off)
$229.00 | ASUS EAX850PRO/HTVD/256 Radeon X850PRO 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card | http://www.newegg.com (1-day sale, $150 off)
$57.99 | GMP COOLMAX 550W 12CM FAN POWER ( 14027 ) | http://www.amazon.com (tigerdirect)
$400.00 | AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ | http://www.monarchcomputer.com
$31.56 | TAX / Shipp |
====
$1037.54

The case will need to be completely bare asside from fans, as in no power supply. He wanted a silent one so we purchased that separately.

Thanks,
-Warhaven

[mduell]

Don't blow 40% of your budget on a chip that most games can't even use half of. Get something more sensible like the 3700+ for half the price. If he really wants dualcore the 3800+ is less than 10% slower, but nearly $100 less.
Also, I'd buy everything from one store (I like Newegg).

[Warhaven]

Let me rephrase that. He wanted a dual-core system for $1000.00, and now he needs an affordable case.