It all depends on your budget. Come up with a reasonable number and I'd be glad to help you piece something together that will deliver some good bang for the buck.
The best thing about BYO PCs is that you can start small and incrementally upgrade. The important thing is to start off with a solid base.
Sorry for the late response, I hadn't logged onto MF for a few days.
I'd spend about $350-400. And I think a chunk of that would be the Motherboard, Video Card , Hard Drive and processor (preferably Dual Core).
Money is really the only limitation to me building my own PC. With a little help from my dad I'd have a working home made PC. And I know it's blow the Dell out of the water because I'll be buying a very good graphics card, processor and motherboard. I
think I'll be able to take the DVD Drive out of my Dell- I bought a seperate DVD Drive last year, the day after Christmas, to suit my Sims 2 game.
And I'm pretty familiar with the parts of a computer- I've been "under the hood" many times, the first time being taking my old Compaq computer apart (the one that replaced the Dell).
Thanks for the help cwa, I appreciate it.
Oh and by the way, if anyone is curious as to what the game is, it's Auran Trainz Simulator 2006. I know the Z on the end looks dumb but hey, it's an incredible game. I build routes and use tons of high quality custom content and it really takes a toll on the computer-hence the reason I even started considering buying a new video card/ building my own PC.