typical guy :
I just bought a refurbished Dell computer. It's a pain in the ass trying to find them for cheap. Basically you have to sit there refreshing relatively frequently until a low priced one comes up but it does save money and it comes with a one year warranty in case it craps out. I got a refurbished Dell for $379. It's got an i3-530, 6GB DDR3 RAM, Windows 7 Home, 7200RPM 600GB HDD, G320 Graphics card, a regular DVD burner, mouse, keyboard, case, etc. I wanted a low cost computer that would do light gaming (some games at medium or low resolution) and web surf.
The graphics card is crap but there's no way to build this for that price. I checked newegg and the processor is 120, the ram is 160, and amazon has the OEM windows at around 100. So there's the price of the system already. Plus if I had to build my own I'd buy a low end graphics card, the case, the PSU, the motherboard, the fans, the keyboard, the mouse, the optical drive.
If you want a budget PC, you shouldn't try to build your own.
Yeah ok, here is my two cents. If you DON'T know crap about building your own then Buy a Dell or Even a HP. (HP over Dell, personal choice.) But if your building your own then chances are you have some back round with hardware and software so when the unit starts to malfunction you'll probably have a good idea what’s wrong. (ex. the computer boots and continuously beeps. Memory or Video or CPU. You bust-out your Mother board manual and look up your POST diagnostics error codes.) If its the memory then great because you bought memory that has a life time warranty. Like PNY. Or like your Video Card Fails, But wait my video card has a 3yr manufactures warranty. Or if the Hard drive fails. Damn, Seagate has me for 5yrs at no additional charge, manufactures warranty. ALSO Good thing I built my own, because when my Hard drive fails I already have all my recovery media on CD/DVD so I can Reload my Operating system on my new Seagate replacement drive. If your Dell is out of warranty and you didn't make your recovery disc or your unit was not shipped/packaged with recovery media then, you have to pay for out of warranty parts to get the disc after Dell tries and tries to buy you into out of manufacture tech support. Its only like 30bucks w/shipping but still? I hate calling Dell. But with my PC not only is the warranty service better and longer plus cheaper but My Rig... the setup is just how I want it. I don't see to many Furbished PCs out there come with a RAID setup or a liquid cooled System unlock CPUs for over clocking and Blue-Ray But like I said if you know how to build em then Do it. If not... then you will benefit buying a Dell or whatever.... knowledge is power.
My Specs and MFW (Manufactures Warranty) No Additional cost.
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition Thuban 3.2GHz, MFW 3yrs
ASUS Crosshair IV Formula Mother Board, MFW 3yrs
x2 XFX HD-585X-ZABC Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition 1GB, MFW Lifetime
OCZ Reaper Edition 12GB DDR3 1333, MFW Lifetime
OCZ Z Series Gold 1000W PSU, MFW 3yrs
Intel X25-M 80GB (SSD), MFW 3yrs (I won that Bad Boy, company contest)
x2 Seagate 500GB 7200 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb RAID-0 = 1TB,MFW 5yrs
CORSAIR Hydro H70 Liquid Cooled CPU cooler, MFW 2yr
COOLER MASTER HAF 932 Clear Side Case, MFW 1yr Fans are Cheap
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit (I won that too, Full Build (not beta) 2weeks before release last October.)