PC advice needed

[Maverick]

I have a very old and creaky clone I built about 4 years ago. Even then it was not "cutting edge" as I was on a budget. It's not long for this world from the way it's acting.
Current system

AMD Athlon 1800 running at actual 1.53 Ghz
DFI mobo
512 megs of DDR RAM
ATI all inn wonder 9600 vid card (AGP) and 128 megs vid ram I believe.

I have looked at building another machine but the prices I have seem indicate that I'll end up spending about $800 to $1000.00 for a system that again isn't cutting edge but decent for at least a couple years.

I'm talking
AMD 939 pin at 3200 +/-
ASUS or ABIT mobo
2 gig DDR ram (Crucial if possible)
a newer ATI vid card maybe the 1650 XT or XTpro
a single 200 gig HD
DVD RW
CD rom
new ATX case with 450 watt PS or at least a new 450 PS for the old ATX case.

I've seen several box units with comparable specs (unk vid specs) from best buy, wally world, circuit city and the base PX. The prices look like they would be about $500 to $600.

Being my budget is minus poverty level I am very tempted to go the box route. I don't play the cutting edge games right now as I can't load any of them anyhow. I will be limited to off line games and like the 1st person shooters as well as the strategy games like the old C&C and stuff like that. (strategy games)

Any recomendations about which brand box to consider (Dell, Compaq, HP etc.) or just forget about them entirely?

[Rolex]

I would say forget about them. They're cheap for a reason, but the resaon may not be obvious. They're loaded with crap the assemblers feel is "adding value" or are paid to include. You may run the risk of having Vista installed. Ugh. They are usually light on cheap RAM.

If you can swing it, a dual processor Intel (even the slowest) is probably the better way to go. Are you using XP now? You still have a CD player in your old PC you can use, right? Are you really going to burn DVDs? Just some questions to consider.

[TexInVa]

http://www.newegg.com/