Right ho... My brother is going to be starting college come next term.  His laptop is pretty much dead with the dodgy screen and battery that doesnt work so he has decided he wants a PC.  What he will be using it for is Work & Gaming.  Though I dont mean extensive gaming, just that if he wantd to play some think Age Of Empires 3, or Half Life 2 for example he could.  

Something like a PCI-E Geforce 6 card I imagine.  What would be ideal would be a well priced system with the option of upgrading it in the future.

The budget is £600, not that that he is looking to spend it all on a system.  He is going to need the baseunit, Monitor 15/17 " TFT & a Keyboard & Mouse.  What I need help with is figuring out the PC & Monitor.

His desk is a bit cluttered atm so a small case under the desk would be good, are mATX boards any good these days?  What about shuttles are they still an expensive option?  Perhaps something that could replace his radio which is slightly bigger than your average shuttle.

/Edit, he is not bothered about that, he would happily stick the PC under the desk sacrifcing space for performance.

Im not sure where to start, there are plenty of options where there presellected kits * prebuilt PCs online, but of course buying your own bits is allways cheaper I just dont know where to start.  

ATM I am in favour of the AMD & PCI-E route.  Any advice would be muchly apreciated.

Agree with the comment on the keyboard...

I reckon it could be done cheaper than that a 6600GT would be enough for what he wants to game on. More than likely save a few bucks on that.

Just put a new mobo, cpu and ram into my brothers for £190
3000 A64
Mobo 939 Abit
1Gb RAM

Add £25 for cd drive, £70 for graphics card. I would say that would be an okay rig...

Cheers for the links soopah.  

I wasnt sure my self if the bits worked out cheaper on their own or in a kit for one, but that is quite an impressive kit there, I can see they are using proper branded components for one.

I think would go with the 17" LG, Im nto sure if we will have space for a 19", I will have to check the measurements later.  I was looking at the samsung, BneQ & LG monitors.