[Mauldor]

Sorry I should have put more info in my main topic -- I fix computers for a living so have no problems with either building or supporting the machine for that angle. The reason why I looked at dell, was mainly this factory outlet thing, theory been a good-ish pc for a lot les money.

Now P4 vs Athlon 64 thing (another topic all on its own I know) - To me its horses for courses as some things a P4 is good (as it has HT) and others thing the athlon is better and so forth.

I think the best option as many have said - is probably price parts and see how much a good system would come to. For example the X300 in the dell machine is a very basic card and means sooner rather than later I would have to spend money again on a better card..

The point about what you get might be old is def a thing that stook in my head, it tells you nothing really on dell site as to what P4 it is, what motherboard and so forth, the only clue is the 400-512 ram, which i am guessing is 400Mhz DDR ram x 2 512 sticks which means its not the DDR2 ram etc.

Thanks for all the input - Ill go do some digging into which bits to buy (CPU etc), my only thougts were A-643400 (old core) vs A-643500 (new Core) but has half the cache...hmmm