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Gaming computer on a budget ($784)?

Im building a computer to keep up with todays games (COD4, GOW, ETC) --CASE:Standard ATX Mid-Tower Case w/350W Power Supply --PROCESSOR:AMD Athlon™ X2 5000+ Dual-Core CPU w/ HyperTransport Technology --MOTHERBOARD:Asus M2A-VM AMD 690G Chipset w/6-channels, Gb LAN, S-ATA Raid, USB 2.0, Single PCI-E MB --MEMORY: 4 GB [1 GB X4] DDR2-800 PC6400 Memory Module --VIDEO CARD: Nvidea GeForce 8800GT 1GB w/DVI --160 GB HARD DRIVE --DRIVE: 16x DVD-ROM Drive --Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic 32 bit --LinkSys WUSB54G 802.11g 54Mbps Wireless USB Adapter --100W PMPO (RMS: 1W) 2 Pcs Stereo Speaker System --3D Premium Surround Sound Onboard and this stuff for free :) Halo 2 Age of Empires III Rise Of Nations: Rise of Legend Suggestions and comments welcome So which wattage do you think is right? Some people say 600-700w and some people say 400-500w.

Public Comments

1. 1. According to the online power supply calculator, you will need at least a 450 watt power supply, minimum. Your current PSU is probably the stock unit and you risk reaching its limit, putting you at risk for a psu burn-out, or worse still, damage to that nice graphics card or Motherboard you have http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp 2. That's it! nice setup, economical, powerful, and you invested the money where it belongs, into a good graphics card. You spent about what you would expect to spend on a system with those specs, and you got a couple of goodies thrown in, like about $75+ worth of games, the wireless adapter, and $40 more of memory than what most systems come with these days. You will easily see 50+ frames per second on any of the games you listed, even at medium to high settings. Some may complain about Vista or your current card, but the truth is that a copy of XP would cost you money, and you would get only a whopping 2-3 extra FPS from the change, maybe. A better graphics card than what you have would cost you over $175 easily. Why not just save that money and enjoy your present games and any others you might discover instead?
2. I would get a new PSU running at 650w-700w if you try and boot up with a 350w PSU sys will fail, also use windows XP, Vista Basic isn't very good also you will find that only 3 of the 4gigs of ram will come up unless you get a 64bit operating system.
3. Shop around. I wouldn't pay more than $750 for that set up with Windows included. And as previously stated, that 350W PSU probably won't support an 8800GT.
4. You will have to have a more powerful power supply, I have a similar computer and I had to get rid of the stock psu and upgrade to a 500watt psu just in order to use my Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS card. Hard drive is rather small but will be fine and I am not a fan of Vista Home basic, I have ultimate but Home premium is usually fine too. Home premium is what I originally had and later upgraded. Basically for a Budget Gaming computer this one is fine, it almost mimics what I currently have and I can play any game out at very high settings, like I said the PSU is the only thing that HAS to be upgraded. The rest of my comments are just suggestions. UPDATE: with a PSU, the bigger, the better. Bare minimum for this card is 450 but I would recommend as large as you can afford. So if you can afford a 650 or 700 get it but you will more than likely not utilize that much, but it is always better to not be stressing the psu by running at its max all the time, this causes failure and overheating. 500 watt works fine with mine for over a year now and I never have any problems and I have the same setup as you plus 2 500 GB SATA hard drives and I still have room. FYI: Ideally if you wanted to soup up this system you would want to get a different motherboard with dual sli capable PCIe x16 slots, so you could run two of these 8800 GT cards in the future or go with 9800 GTXs instead and you would want 320 or 500 GB hard drive with home premium or ultimate, also upgrading your PSU to a 500 or 650 watt....then you have moved beyond budget to a pretty dang good system.