an operating system can really reduce the amount you can spend on the rest
so for a box with only one game in mind, that must have everything including an operating system for under 500$ and still be able to play the game smoothly at the very least on low settings (but will probably do medium easily) here's what I came up with,
http://secure.newegg...Number=15500554
utility needs for hard drive run up to 32 gb, that's including virtual memory overhead and marketing shenanigans with marking gb size improperly leaving you 8 gb left over for games and "pictures". and yes I know it's "refurbished". I buy all hard drives I intend to be regular use refurbished because they're very inexpensive, and out of the last 10 i've bought in 5 years only one is no longer working, and that was because i'm a butterfingers. In terms of "speed drives" or "frequent access storage drives" i'd prefer to buy new and not skimp, and I'd certainly never buy a ssd used unless the memory block was completely replaced.
as far as future proofing goes, the motherboard lets you put up to any am3+ chip, and the power supply should easily handle a 125w thermal cpu and something like a 6850 at the same time. however crossfire is not available. I'm pretty certain a 6850 can run three monitors but one of the monitors has to be display port compatable, you would have to look into that.
I have a 5770 which is basically the older version of the 6770, they are pretty identical in performance and I can run games like skyrim very well with things like anti aliasing and shadows turned down but not off.
the reason why I went a little extra on the motherboard is because as well as being slightly future proofed it also comes with a core unlocker, which means you may get lucky with the tri core and get a quad out of it, if not you still exceed the minimum requirements for this game. Plus when you go under 60$ some manufacturers like to not include a mosfet heatsink to cut costs, which can potentially lead to a thermal runaway, and that's not a very fun way to spend an evening, smelling burnt plastic because the power controllers in your board decided to revolt by melting
undeniably I did skim in the case and drives department, but as far as the case goes it wouldn't be hard to upgrade into a slightly better case sometime down the road
however
http://mwomercs.com/...-for-mwo-1080p/ is much better imo if you don't need to buy an operating system. the 7770 isn't better than a 6850 but costs the same and I'm skeptical of that cpu, technically it runs a lot cooler with a 20% gain in multicore processing power over oh say, a PH2 955, meaning in theory it overclocks well.
so yeah replace that 7770 with a 6850 and you have a very, very nice rig for 500$ minus an operating system, and don't sass me on this, 256 bit memory interface is vastly superior to 128 bit
remember, the key to identifying radeon cards is in the tens and hundreds place, [x]*** denotes generation(higher=newer), *[x]**denotes performance bracket(higher=more performance), **[x]* denotes quality inside bracket(higher=more quality).
Edited by Battlecruiser, 23 June 2012 - 08:50 PM.
2
, it's all good man, thanks danno
is that a reportable offence? 
you should get some possible credit for "trying" to be funny 
thanks danno
