Been slightly out of the loop for a year or two, but Ive got a mate who wants a new pc.  Hes been looking at pre-built ones but Im trying to convince him to DIY it to save money.

So can anyone give me specs/price of an average rig today?  What would you get for, say, Ã,£500-Ã,£600?  Hes upgrading from a laptop so hell need mouse/kb/lcd etc etc.

I used to build my own, really its no more expensive to buy a new system unit. If it does cost more then the extra Ã,£10-20 can be seen as an investment in that you dont have to troubleshoot problems that turn up or deal with DOA or incompatable components. It will take you at least 4 hours to go through the manuals and build the thing anyway so really it isnt a saving.

Usually you will find companies allow you to specify what you want.

Recent DIY PCs have often had initial problems with ram compatibility and I would tend to go for a full system unit just to avoid that.

Ive just built my new rig my self but all was good for it and its all working sound.

If I had extra cash and didnt know exactly what I wanted I would of gone with a pre-built Prices at the moment aint bad at all, even for a Dell

A couple of months ago I built my brother a complete system for around Ã,£600.  

Athlon 64 3800, 1GB Corsair Dual Channel 800Mhz, Club 3D 7600GS 256mb DDR2, 250GB Hard Disk, Coolermaster Centurion 5 Case, Benq FP92G 19" 8ms DVI, cheap mouse & keyboard, XP home, PSU.

Though if I did the same now I would have gone with a core duo system tbh, not that I regret the choices at the time.