£600 these days will get you a gaming monster beast of a PC.
Of course I'm talking about build it yourself...
Off the top of my head, If I were building one tomorrow...
CPU: One of the new Intel 45nm dual cores (quad core is overkill), the cheapest is about £85.
But the older e2160 dual core can still be had for about £40, and these can overclock massively, with ease to about 3ghz.
Future proof mobo? The new Intel P45 based boards are out in a few weeks, they have PCI express 2.0 graphics card slots, which will be the next generation in graphic card technology (no real performance gain at this time though) Asus P5Q mobo out v.soon from about £90 - £160
You could just stick with the current P35 boards, for abot £65, Asus or Gigabyte
Graphics: nvidia 8800GT is the best all rounder at the moment, will run latest games like COD4 and Crysis with ease.
You can get a 500gb drive these days for about £45, or if you don't download movies and the like get a smaller drive, 250-320GB for example, and spend the money saved on an external drive for backing up your machine (REGULARLY!)
Standard DVDRW drive for about £16, make sure it's SATA.
You could get a Blu-Ray drive if you are into movies and have a massive telly to output to (and in the same room as the PC!)
Memory: get 2 GB of good quality DDR2 for about £30 - £35.
Power supply: Corsair HX Modular series, 5 year warranty, the only choice.
Windows XP (oem) for about £65, go with Vista if you're feeling brave.
Case: take your pick, you can get a half decent branded one for about £25 - £50 (some Coolermaster ones on ebuyer for under £50 including CM PSU)
Top it off with a 19" TFT for about £120 or less.
Make the most of special offers pages on Scan (today only), Aria (superspecials), Overclockers (This week only) and eBuyer websites. For the cheapest parts. If you want any specific pointers, holler back.
Yes, I am somewhat of a geek.
