allright im trying to build a somewhat budget pc, but yet still have it kick some bootay. which is difficult, i dont know if you knew that or not.....anyway heres the specs im probly gonna go with when i get the money:

P4 with HyperThreading running at 2.8GHZ
ECS "865PE-A" motherboard
1gb Dual-Channel DDR 400
Nvidia FX 5500 video card
Hitachi 80GB 7200rpm SATA hard drive
and various other optical drives but those dont affect much

believe it or not most all of that is under 100 bucks a piece. but do you guys see any potential bottlenecks or anything?

That should all be compatible. The only problems I can see right off is the Hyperthreading. It'* still a new technology and many applications don't work with it too well. I know this because I also have a hyperthreaded p4. It'* just application problems though, which are easily fixed through updates/drivers.

One of my computers has HT, but no problems. The big question is why do you need all of that? Serious gamer or something?

uh...thats like gonna be a $600-$800 computer thats not a budget machine at all but go with at least a 100gig hdd now adays there cheep enough if you wanna save a bit more go with an AMD64 3000+ it will end up being a bit cheaper then the P4 HT and if your not a gamer your really havening over kill here

ah i forgot to mention, yes i am a gamer, so thats my budget GAMING pc yeah if i just wanted one to do basic stuff then thatd only be like 200 bucks but i was kinda thinkin that that video card might be good enough but im just not sure. itll probly be allright though...another question, do you think i should just get an IDE hard drive? i mean SATA is a little faster i know but its also more expensive. so would i be better off to just get a really big IDE hard drive for about the same price as a decent sized SATA? im still kinda new at all this so bear with me. i just know i like gaming and i like computers and i can build one thats alot better than the one i have now.

with serial ata your not gonna notice much different in your games but maybe 2-5sec faster load times that I know of anyways....an my budget all purpose machine barely plays painkiller an it dosent even meat any of the minimum requirements of the game

Make sure you have a processor over 1.5 ghz, more than 400mb RAM, good video card, a 40 gig HD will suffice to start off with, and a reliable DVD player/CD player. if only games are going to be on it, that should do. though, are you going to be playing online?

HT can be turned off in the motherboard bios.

i may just go with a big ol IDE hard drive then, id heard that there wasnt much difference speed wise, but with SATA you can get the RAID feature but i dont want that anyway so i may just go with that then. and i want a good mix of speed and price because this thing is gonna have to fight off obselence for a while and there may be some online gaming taking place when i go to college because ill have cable there. but as for now no because im on dial-up:(

Twister those specs don't come on the cheapest big wig computers.... They're Low..

I'd say get the ATI 9600 instead of the 5500.