1. You can get office from Gocomp as well. http://www.gocomp.com.au/index.php?cpath=productinfo&pid=II00872&catpath=0_28_135

$113

Just bear in mind that they are going to release Office 2010 this year so you may want to wait or make sure that you can upgrade for free.

2. Oh I thought it was terrible given the resolution you were running. In any case its optional, delete away if you don't want it. I figured I would pad out the budget to the full $1800. Also if the resolution you gave is the maximum then drop the graphics card in favour of the 5770 because that would make the GPU overkill http://www.gocomp.com.au/index.php?cpath=productinfo&pid=II06571

3. Complete waste... Its hard enough to get a Phenom II to stretch its legs with console ports + the rise of low power laptop computers. This part represents a good balance for longevity, power consumption and overall platform cost.

Sorry mate gamedude is just brisbane as far as i am aware.  But there are definitely some places down in sydney that are similar. I am just no aware of them :( But you will be able to find similar prices and products in sydney.

@squilliam - I really can't recommend that build at all, the monitor is overkill and so is the video card, and 2gb of ram???? Madness!!!

@hsrob - I agree building your own system can be very satisfying, i have built my last few and actually have really enjoyed it, but in starcraft's case i'm going to suggest he lets the pro's do it as it's for his family.  I can just imagine the look on his dads face when he tells him he can't get it working or something.. his dad will probably reply "oh shoulda gone to harvey norman"

I would strongly recommend getting a new monitor though, but if you get a monitor don't go LED, they are not worth what you pay for them.

I'm in Australia and built a Core i7 system from scratch for about $1500 I think and that was 12-18 months ago. You should easily be able to build a kick ass system for $1800 now.
I got an Intel DX58SO motherboard, Core i7 2.66Ghz, 6GB Corsair DDR3 RAM, 1TB HDD plus 146GB 10k RPM HDD, 520W Corsair Power Supply and ASUS 9800GTX+ graphics card. Total was well under your $1800 budget, but those parts are probably well out of date now.

Two tips I will give you from my recent experience quoting products for customers
1) If you are going to get a monitor get the Samsung 2494HS. It's 23.6" 1920x1080 widescreen with DVI, HDMI, built in speakers and 3 year warranty for only AUD$259 Inc GST on shopbot. Much better than the 24" for $450 which is the same resolution and only 0.4" bigger.

2) Buy a retail copy of Office 2007 Small Business Edition Retail (not OEM) from Harris Technology (or whoever else has it for $238 Inc GST or less). Microsoft aren't releasing a Small Business Edition for 2010, but if you buy SBE now the free upgrade goes to Office Professional 2010. That's an $800 product for almost 1/4 of the price. Not only that but as it is a full retail copy instead of OEM, it's not tied to the hardware you purchased it with, it's completely transferable.

I like the sound of Gamedude lol. I can highly recommend them, starcraft.

Squilliams comp is awesome, i mean the list he posted with the 5850 and Phenom II. I plan to upgrade to exactly that myself soon. I have a similar Samsung 24" monitor already though.

Please go for that one starcraft.

This is actually close to the build I went with except I took the Intel i5 route, plus the extra RAM and larger HDD.

The case is expensive but really nice and quiet, easy to work with, just top notch quality.  I decided to go with the better case as I figure it's going to be the nucleus for future builds so it's worth getting something that's quality.

The monitor is sweet, LED so it's extremely sleek and slim, with excellent IQ, great colour and very fast, but on a negative the black levels still aren't as good as I had hoped (My expectations were probably a little high and they are still excellent for a comp monitor).  I did heaps of reading on monitors and according to those in the know the XL2370 is pretty much the best thing in that price range but if I was going for a cheaper alternative I would go with this http://www1.ap.dell.com/au/en/home/monitors/monitor-dell-sp2309wfp/pd.aspx?refid=monitor-dell-sp2309wfp&cs=audhs1&s=dhs

The 5850 really is a beast and I've been able to run the vast majority of new games I've tried at 1920*1080 approaching or above 60fps with full details and it literally laughs at older games and console ports.  If you weren't going to upgrade to a new monitor though I'm just not convinced all that power is going to be used.

If you dropped the monitor and the 5850 out of the build you then have heaps of room to play with in terms of software, additional RAM or HDD space and you would still come WELL under your $1800 budget.

edit: can provide pics if desired

Thanks Slimebeast @ Eggs 2 see I listed it as 2GB *2 which is 4GB lol.

Thanks man, one does ones best for friends.

But yeah dropping the 5850 and going back to the 5770 is the right thing to do with a lesser monitor which is little more than 720P. The graphics card requirements scale with time and with the size of the monitor. My rule of the thumb is to spend aprox the same money on the GPU as monitor which will be good for the coming future at least.

Btw the Ram I listed was 2 * 2GB = 4GB but it was the cheapest option there.

Oooo my bad i missed that, apologies squilliam.  I think everyone here is in agreeance on most things though, and thats go with AMD phenom quad.  Oh and don't skimp on a power supply and case because as hsrob said, it's essentially the core.  I would still strongly suggest a good motherboard like the one i listed and a 5770 with the option to crossfire another 5770 later... no dx11 though with a 5770 so you may just want to get a whole new card down the track.

Unfortunately anything substantially better than a 5770 at the moment and you pay SUBSTANTIALLY more too.

I suspect that a motherboard like that may very well be overkill. What extra capabilities does one get for spending an extra 130% over top of getting 4 ram slots, a PCI-E slot and a decent quantity of USB and SATA ports?

In any case with lower resolution comes a reduced need to spend money on the graphics card. Whilst CPUs scale to the software, GPUs scale to both software and the number of pixels they have to render the graphics for.