If anyone could suggest better parts for the money, but essentially I have a £250 budget excluding P&P, and I am buying two of these systems.

What I have found:
2.4GHz C2D
2GB RAM
suitable motherboard
8600GT

Price: £216.something

Could I get any better, in my frankly, tiny, budget?

Do you need a case, PSU, HDD?

If no (only those 4 items);
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=657881
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=255300
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=772613
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=632058

£246 delivered

I assumed you were getting it for general gaming, and frankly, the 8600 is rubbish (it was on release). The 9600GT is a much better card, but quite a bit more expensive. You could save £20 with a GSO which has more cores, but much lower clocks and less memory. I am unsure of it's performance;
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=815996

EDIT: After some quick research, it would appear the GSO suffers from lower bandwidth, but does outperform the GT in half the cases. I think you would be happy with either.

Ok I just remembered, how would I go about making sure that it has one of those 4 pin audio connection things like what you used to have for CD-IN on sound cards, as I need that for my TV tuner to work.

On the motherboard tech specs, under Internal I/O it says "1 x FP Audio Header" which might be what you need (though Google says it's front panel audio, which might not be it).

If you need to be sure, you could buy a separate soundcard, use an old soundcard that has one, or buy a new TV tuner.

Or, I could go logically like i just did, download the manual for the motherboard and read it.

lol it does

doesnt look like a bad system to me.

For the price, it is a very nice system! Well, technically it's an upgrade.

u should get an ati card instead cheaper and more reliable i have heard

He made this thread before the HD4s were released. If you haven't done this yet, Si, and a HD4850 would fit in your budget, it would be a good choice.

I am still thinking of getting my family another half-decent computer. They hate the Linux machine to be fair...

Well you can build some pretty nice systems for a pittance now.

Update, finally bought the parts yesterday.

In my shopping basket:

• Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 2.53GHz
• Gigabyte S775 Intel P31 DDR2 ATX Audio Lan
• Corsair Memory 2x1GB 240-Pin DIMM XMS2-6400 CL5
• Gigabyte Radeon 4850 512MB PCIE 2xDVI

Price: £261.61

I think this is a brilliant upgrade from my 1.3GHz AMD Athlon XP, 512MB RAM with a 5200

You should be able to overclock the nuts off that thing. That system will see you through the next year or two of games to the market

lol kwl
lol wish i could aford tht lol mines startin to show its age at times lol

That should be awesome, Si. The 4850 is a fantastic card, and those C2Ds (especially seeing as that's a 45nm) overclock like crazy. I think that motherboard is a great overclocker if it's the D3SL.

Have fun with that system!

You still building 2 or just the one?

Just the one now

shame u will still have such a high ping in game xD

When his internet isn't screwing he does get single figures, lol.

ive never seen si play with a ping less than 80 ^^

Eh? WTF?

I've seen Si with a ping of 8 on our servers xP

Give me an order shipping tracking reference

I already have mine

Has Vista gone beyond 5.9 yet, cos my last build was a 5.3

Ze parts come tommorow... and then we shall bench tehuberpc (aarons) vs tehnubpc (mine)