My Gaming rig was about under 600$
AMD Dual Core 3800
Asus M2N-MX mATX
2 Gigs of Corsair Value RAM
250 gig Hardrive
and most important of all
Geforce 8800 GTS
I’d say with about $400 you can afford a decent mid range video card (Radeon HD 2600 XT Saphire) on the market along with a PCI-E board, new value RAM and an AMD 3800 Dual Core. The case would have to be Vanilla though, unless you can find something a tad nicer without being pricey.
In fact, let’s go to new egg.
CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx…N82E16819103747
AMD X2 4200 – $82.50
Mobo:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx…N82E16813131174
M2A-VM – $74.99
RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx…N82E16820227082
OCZ one gig of RAM, pretty good Price: $51.99
Video Card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx…N82E16814127300
MSI Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256mb – $89.99
That adds up to $299 roughly, leaving a hundred bones for a case, an optical drive and a hardrive, and with the price of this stuff these days, I think you can squeeze it in.