A barebones recommendation

What would be the best barebones kit for the money.

I am trying to build a really cheap pc for my familly. The most they would be using it for is to play sims 2...

my gf plays sims 2 on an athlon 2600+, 1 gig of ram, and something crappy like a gforce 5200. though if they're going to use a lot of custom content they'll need a better processor and prolyl vid card. but the components i've listed are practically dirt cheap these days.

Don't get the GeForceFX 5200.  They sucked even at launch.  If you want nVidia, go for at least a GeForceFX 5700.

The Sims2 is really bloated and resource hungry, barebones isn't gonna cut it.

I lol whenever people say they need "barebones" or whatever and then they explain that they only need it for playing games. Newsflash: games are pretty much the only thing that actually require anything more powerful than a 486.

>>4
Or high-def video.  DVD video needs at least a Pentium on really good hardware.

>>4

I understand this and the fact is, if my little sister can't play a game that she will ultimately play for probably 2 months tops it isn't the end of the world.

And if I don't use it (which I won't) then it won't be used for anything else then surfing the web and going on AIM.

>>1
Anonymous recommends:
- AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (S754 or S939, I don't care, better if you can find a Socket 754 one with a mobo, as they're cheaper).
- MSI motherboard with VIA chipset and AGP bus.
- 512 MB RAM (Kingston ValueRAM is good and cheap). Might need 1 GB if you run Windows XP instead of Windows 2000 and you love system tray bullshit and Internet Explorer, but you shouldn't.
- nVidia GeForce 6600 128 MB AGP, or an ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128 MB AGP if you want to go cheaper.
- Seagate SATA HD, 80 GB will be enough.
- A single NEC ND3xxx DVD±RW drive, no read-only drive as this drive is awesome and cheap as hell so you don't mind using it to read.
- Use integrated sound and LAN, reuse existing speakers.
- Philips 17" CRT, which looks better than TFTs and costs much less. Don't fall for fads or "it looks kewl like Star Trek, lol!!!1111 U+0021 EXCLAMATION MARK !!11".
- Reuse existing mouse and keyboard unless they suck; if they suck, get an optical mouse and the simplest, less "multimedia" (=FAGGOTRY) keyboard you can find, and most of all, never go wireless as that shit sucks and it's more expensive and it's yet another thing to take care of.

OS: Windows 2000 SP4 properly tuned and configured
Security: Firewall (hardware if possible), non-resident antivirus ran on everything new, do not use MSIE, use Firefox or Opera.

>>7
via chipset for teh fail

>>8
via chipset for fuck win

>>9
via chipset for fucking suck. Get over it man, VIA fucking sucks like your mom.

I thought only dead people have bare bones.

>>8 = >>10
So, you had a problem with it, so you go saying it sucks. Well, I assure you *every* fucking chipset on Earth gave some kind of ugly problem to somebody at one point in time. It's about how frequent they are and how many configurations exhibit them. It's also about price, performance, and max(performance/price).

Don't skimp on the mainboard/chipset. You're just making trouble for yourself. Try Asus A8N-VM, on-board GeForce 6100/nForce 410, $76 online.