markers said:
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The Phenom II X4 3.0Ghz and the Saphire card were a bundle sale. Since you wanted to do relatively CPU intensive tasks with music editing/burning/excel/photoshop I started with the assumption that a strong CPU would be an excellent base for what you wanted to do with the computer. The Saphire 5770 was about the best price/performance graphics card which fit your requirements whilst still keeping within your budget. Furthermore since it doesn't draw too much power you could get away with a cheaper power supply and case.
The 4GB ram is what you asked for, it was about as cheap as you can get 4GB of quality ram and IMO people tend to go overboard with ram which has fancy bling on it.
The case has some pretty good reviews and it was one of the best value cases for $70 with a PSU, its a personal thing and you could pretty much replace it with what you want. Its not brilliant, but its not bad. Theres an Antec case for $80 with a better PSU which has just come out on the market however.
Windows 64 is pretty self explanatory IMO, unless you can get it free you're better off buying the OEM version as my friends with copied versions are having heaps of problems keeping them activated.
I chose a 320GB HDD because I felt that you wanted to keep to the budget as much as possible. Also you'll be better off with two HDDs eventually as it will offer better performance if you're not always hitting the same drive all the time, a drive can only offer so much performance...
The Sony DVD burner was the cheapest, but its also a good brand!
The AsRock represents the best value motherboard I could see. It has 4 Ram slots and whilst it doesn't come with onboard video it doesn't need it as you're already getting a video card. It also had good reviews on Newegg.
Options.
Probably the best alternatives would be:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121356 Which is an HD 5750 for $115 after MIR
and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103702 which is a 2.9Ghz Athlon II for $100
Total that would be $215 after MIR compared to $275. So an overall saving of $60 which would be worth it if you're stretching your budgget too much with the original pricing I figured out. Overall the build would be about 10% cheaper but you would lose 20-30% of the performance so IMO its not as good unless you're not able to afford the $670 or so.
Essay Pro