I'm an industrial designer who started learning a few weeks ago about building my own PC, so basically I want one that runs Adobe Creative Suite 2, and can run CS Source, and Starcraft II when it comes out.

Lian Li PC-V300 case $110

ASUS P5L-VM 1394 LGA 775 Intel 945G Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - $89

Intel Core 2 Duo E6320 Conroe 1.86GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor - $165

Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600AAJS 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM - $53

Kingston HyperX 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - $144

PNY GeForce 8600 GT / 256MB DDR3 / SLI Ready / PCI Express / DL Dual DVI / HDTV / Video Card - $150

Basically, about $715 without the other stuff or monitor. I'm a total noob, and would like to cut it down about $200. I suspect maybe I can save money on the RAM, the processor, and the hard drive?

Also, for that case, I think video cards 8" and over won't fit without cutting the metal floppy drive casing.

(EDITED) I see an ASUS mATX MB-- is there one without an intergrated graphics card?

you could trade the cpu for a e4300, if your overclocking you probably won't notice much difference.

actually even if your not overclocking you probably still won't notice much difference.

you could trade the cpu for a e4300, if your overclocking you probably won't notice much difference.

actually even if your not overclocking you probably still won't notice much difference.

Random__Guy

Yeah I'm not even going to try to overclock, I'm already enough of a noob. 

[QUOTE="Random__Guy"]You usually save some money buying two single sticks instead of the dual channel kit, as long as they are the same kind and you buy them at the same time there's a 99.9 percent chance they will run in dual channel moderoulettethedog

I bought 4 Kingston 512 sticks of DDR2 667 over 2 months and they run dual just fine.

To the original poster: I'd say get a cheaper case, a weaker video card, and less RAM in-order to bail on that micro-ATX mobo. You can always in the future upgrade these 3 parts when fund become available to you.

Maybe I'm just too tired, but you're saying spend more on a better mATX mobo and less on the other stuff?  Also, do any mATX mobos come WITHOUT an integrated vid card? 

I think ya aming to low a 1.86ghz CPU is exactly fast, a 2.0ghz would be better , but if ya trying to save some money you could try only getting 1GB of ram instead of 2, or you try getting 667mhz on the ram instead of 800mhz but i doubt that the price will drop that much, but its still a decent system and $715 is pretty cheap. Adobe Creative Suite 2 CS Source it should run them fine.
runejedi