This is the motheboard I'm planning on buying for my E6400. $110, stable, overclockable, and even supports Core Quads. Reviews from Anandtech and such were quite favorable. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128017 Regarding RAM, Intel Core 2 Duos don't really care about latency that much. Names like G.Skill and A-Data are not generic ram, and yet they're very cheap. Better to get more ram instead of better timings.
Oh forgot to add this: You should be able to get a good 500W power supply, take the cash you save and buy 2GB of RAM instead of 1GB. And unless your friend is going to overclock his CPU, the E6400 only needs DDR2-533.
I'd say a 700W power suppy is a bit much. Even the craziest 8800GTX I could find only asked for 450W.
Also, it should be noted that there is a strong possibility the 8600 Ultra is just a rumor. We keep hearing that there will be budget Series 8 cards in March, but the price and specs on the 8600UL are a bit too good to be true.
Well my initial reaction, if you want to start building this now, is to get an AMD system. The AM2 offerings (that's AMD's new socket type, which is phasing out the 939) are currently not as great as the Intel Core 2 Duos, however these things constantly go back and forth. The AM2 would give you an upgrade path for the future and be cheaper at the moment than the Intel offering. I'd probably go with the cheapest AMD AM2 processor (the $109 dual-core AMD X2 3800+ from NewEgg). Battlefield and multiplayer games in general shouldn't overly tax your CPU. A gig of DDR2 would be another $80-ish and a 7900GT (best performance for the cost, imo) would be $200.
Oh I should clarify. When I say how long will you need it for gaming, what I really mean is how long until you would be able to/want to buy a whole new system. If you want to be able to upgrade the CPU and RAM on the machine you build for a while, it will mean going with a DDR2 solution, which increases costs.
The fairly recent introductions of Core 2 Duo and AMD's socket switch, with the associated high demand price hikes for DDR2 RAM, make building an $800 gaming PC with an upgrade path problematic at the moment. A good question might be, how long will you need this computer for gaming? Is the only thing you want to play 2142?
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