Righto, i know there are possibly people out there who want to get into the LANning community (or who just want a system with some gaming grunt), who just dont have the right equipment for it.
And its not a cheap thing to do either, so, i took the liberty of "whacking" together some rough shopping carts from my personally preffered online store.

Both systems come in around the $1200 mark, the only difference is the chip branding, one is AMD the other is Intel.

AMD Gamer
Intel Gamer

Prices are current as of the dates on each of the Carts.

please note, these are NOT official quotes from scorptec, merely a guide. this is what i would personally consider BASE level hardware for todays games, and should handle anything for say, the next 12 months with ease.

Neither system includes a monitor / kb / mouse or speakers, or any hardware that i would deem as "enthusiast" such as High end Sound cards, peroformance HDDs, or motherboards with an over the top feature set. nor do they include ANY software, windows will be required (i left it off of the quote as some people may already have an install CD and license to move over)

to get a more current price, simply open each product link in a new firefox tab using the "CTRL+Left Click" or "middle mouse button" option, and add each to a shopping cart.

Any comments, suggestions, or questions, just ask in this thread.
Have another preffered store? hows about something similar done for them, to give people some choice.

don't get either, wait Intel's new Quad Core 2 processor came out and its around the $500 USD mark... these will all go down in price, thought Gaming on Intel PC's is just as good these days.

Always waiting for things, its really annoying, always something bigger and better coming out.

personally, i have the cash to get something more high end..

however, im talking about the year 10 student, who has no job, and who wants a new computer for "study". you must admit, the first computer you got probably wasnt all that amazing as far as games go.. and no doubt seemed to cost a fortune..

i remember telling my dad not to get any less than 256Mb of ram, and a 30 Gb HDD... geez, that was a long time ago.

going back in time.....

Amstard 386, 8MB Ram, now that was tough at the time, killed the 286, then they went and released a 486! pfft, wasn't impressed.

Heh.. i had an intel 486, whitebox system from DCA.
That thing cost the best part of $3000, and i still had it in working order up until last year, i set it up and powered it on, and the PSU blew up.