I fried my graphics card this morning. Not quite sure how it happened, but it doesnt work in mine or my girlfriends computer. Her's works in mine and everything is fine.

Budget it $250-$280.  Needs to be AGP (I dont feel like dropping a grand on upgrading to PCIe  cards.)

any of these will do fine linksys (AGP 4-8X)  200-300 dollar range

The Radeon X1950 XT (by Gecube) is the fastest AGP (which is a dying standard FYI) card ever made and can be had for about $260.

Newegg Link:
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814241049

Quoted: I just had my computer shit its pants and fry my power supply, mobo and I just found out one of my two crossfire cards is dead.  And this folks is why I am through building machines.  My nice dell warranty covered the whole deal.  Ahh the joy of not having to spend money when some damn thing inevitably breaks. I learned this lesson after struggling with a machine I built that that had a bad host adapter.  I wanted to kill myself diagnosing that error.  Hmm my HD is bad.  No wait, new HD same problem.  Let me test my ram, hmm no same problem.  Mobo?  KillMeNow..... All the while my buddy had a new dell he got the same time I built my old one and he had some issues, but dell just sent him spare parts like next day.  I wanted to kill him after wasting mad cash.  I washed my hands of home builds after that.  ugh had to rant about my computer dying.

I'd rather build a pc and use high quality parts and not have to worry about shitty power supplies or bad motherboards bringing the whole system down than buy some stripped down dell machine loaded with pre-installed bloatware that costs way too much money.

Dude, I feel your pain.  I have held off a long time because my gaming rig is AGP.

At this point, ditch the AGP.  Suck it up and start saving if you can.  I'd think you'd be better off with an OK CPU, good board, and good enough for now video card then upgrade the card when you can.

The newer AMD and Core 2 Duo CPU's smoke the older CPUs.  There are deals at Newegg for good quality 2GB kits of RAM for like $60 after a rebate.

Quoted: Quoted: I just had my computer shit its pants and fry my power supply, mobo and I just found out one of my two crossfire cards is dead.  And this folks is why I am through building machines.  My nice dell warranty covered the whole deal.  Ahh the joy of not having to spend money when some damn thing inevitably breaks. I learned this lesson after struggling with a machine I built that that had a bad host adapter.  I wanted to kill myself diagnosing that error.  Hmm my HD is bad.  No wait, new HD same problem.  Let me test my ram, hmm no same problem.  Mobo?  KillMeNow..... All the while my buddy had a new dell he got the same time I built my old one and he had some issues, but dell just sent him spare parts like next day.  I wanted to kill him after wasting mad cash.  I washed my hands of home builds after that.  ugh had to rant about my computer dying. I'd rather build a pc and use high quality parts and not have to worry about shitty power supplies or bad motherboards bringing the whole system down than buy some stripped down dell machine loaded with pre-installed bloatware that costs way too much money.

I've seen ASUS power supplies, abit power suplies, antec power supplies and god knows how many else up and fuck a computer to death.  I don't know if its because I have just happened to see a lot of bad luck or what.  It did not matter what you put in the case.  It all fucked up eventually.  From like 95-2002 or so I never had a problem building shit.  Then all of a sudden a lot of components on systems I built and others built crapped out.  It was like the QA on the whole market went to shit.  Watching my buddy just get replacements for free drove me over the edge.  

Right now I am running a 2.4ghz core 2 duo with 2 gigs of ram and two radeon x1950s in crossfire.  I don't know what else you would want from a custom build.  I got this thing a while ago too.

Just out of curiosity I would like to know what you would want that is not offered on a dell/hp/whoever build.