How much for a nice SL computer?

I thought I'd go looking to see how little one could spend for a computer that should run SL respectably.

I'm just pricing the computer; I'll assume that we're upgrading, and don't have to get a monitor, keyboard, speakers, and mouse or trackball. Prices are rounded to the nearest dollar, and are those at newegg.com as of today.

I'm no gamer, so I may well be making less than optimal choices here. Suggestions for alternatives would be greatly appreciated.

CPU: 2.6 GHz Athlon 64X2 Brisbane 65W, retail, $60

As far as I know, having more than two cores won't help with SL. I have a 2.8 GHz Athlon 64X2, and it doesn't seem to be the bottleneck, so 2.6 should do reasonably. "Retail" in this context largely means "with fancy packaging and a heatsink/fan," so we'll go that route rather than buy a separate heatsink and fan.

Motherboard: ASUS M3N78-EMH HDMI AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 8200 HDMI Micro ATX AMD, $85

OK, we didn't go for an AM2+ processor, but we want to leave the door open for later, and we definitely want PCI Express 2.0 for the additional bandwidth to the graphics card. On-motherboard graphics aren't suitable for gaming, and I've read that "Hybrid SLI" is constrained by the slower device, so perhaps we should choose one of the AMD motherboards with no on-motherboard graphics.

Graphics card: ASUS EN9600GT TOP/HTDI/512M GeForce 9600 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16, $100

The most expensive thing on the list, but it's where you should put your $$ for gaming--of course, SL isn't a game, but it has much the same hardware requirements.

RAM: G.Skill 2 x 2GB dual channel DDR2 800 RAM sticks, $60

OK, it's not 1066, but SL is very RAM hungry, and for the price it's hard to beat.

Hard drive: Western Digital Caviar WD2500AAJS 250 GB SATA 3 GB/s, $50

Only 8 MB of cache, but again, the price is right, and 250 GB is a lot, unless you get seriously into building and photography in SL and store lots of images and textures.

Case: NXZT Alpha steel ATX mid-tower case, $65

OK... you can get a cute little Micro ATX case with power supply for $100. I did... but OTOH, the higher end graphics cards tend to be on the long side, and may not fit in a Micro ATX case. Also, that power supply isn't modular, and if you try to put a non-modular power supply (one that has all the connectors for stuff soldered on, so that you're guaranteed to have lots of cables that you won't use hanging out and blocking air flow) in one of those cases, you'll be cursing until you go out and buy a modular power supply... so the total cost is less.

Power supply: Antec BP550 Plus 550W modular power supply, $70

I've always had good results with Antec cases and power supplies. There are cheaper house-brand or no-name power supplies, but they are of poor quality.

DVD: Lite-On 20X SATA DVD burner, $24

What's to say? DVD burners are very inexpensive these days. I can't say that I'm impressed by Lightscribe, so I didn't bother to insist on it.

Total cost from the wish list, probably less than the total of the rounded prices: $514. That's a good bit less than what I paid for my computer back in March, and I don't have nearly as good a graphics card.

There are some tools you'll need if you don't already have them: Philips-head and flat-head screwdrivers of appropriate size, and to be safe, a grounding strap.

Assembly is pretty trivial, with one exception: installing the heat sink. Some heat sinks go on with spring-loaded clips, and a slip while trying to move the clip into position could lead to plowing a fatal trench in the motherboard with your screwdriver. Take a look at any of many sites telling how to do it, e.g. the Wikibook How to Assemble a Desktop PC.

We didn't include one item in our list: the operating system. That's because we're presuming that you'll install Linux on this computer. The cost of Windows for the home builder is so outrageous compared with that of the hardware as to preclude it if cost is an issue. There are many good distributions to choose from. I use Ubuntu, but it's certainly not the only one out there, and they all have their supporters (and their advantages and disadvantages). Linux is trivial to install these days unless you have some hardware whose manufacturers are sufficiently obnoxious and short-sighted as to neither provide Linux drivers nor, preferably, release sufficient information to allow others to write fully capable Open Source drivers. I don't believe that I've made that mistake here. If you are still hesitant, look for a Linux Users Group in your area; they'll be happy to help, and may even have an "Install Fest" scheduled in the near future.

So... that's my attempt. (If I'm not careful, I may be tempted to upgrade.) Again... any suggestions are welcome.

P.S. There are some rebates at the time of writing on some of the items listed, which would reduce the price somewhat... and of course, the above doesn't include shipping costs.

UPDATE: newegg.com and Tiger Direct are both offering a 512MB 9800GT for $100 after a $30 mail-in rebate. That should hold one for quite a while.