Help with building a friend's comp

[Andrew_Carr]

One of my friend's is stuck with a ~600mhz p3 atm, and would like to play WoW. The only other thing he will apparently do is use virtual pc. Right now he's considering buying an 80gb hitachi hdd(not necessary though), 512mb of ddr ram(not sure if it's pc3200, he's not sure...) a motherboard, and a 2.4ghz celeron d proc.
At the same time, he wants to be able to upgrade and use his comp for 2 yrs or so. I told him to go amd, but the cheapest socket 939 combo I can think of would still cost him a little more(2800+, 80$ish mobo, then that'd leave him with like 40-50$ for ram).

If anyone has any suggestions for this, I'd appreciate them greatly. I'd like to keep him from getting stuck with a no-future deal.

 

[Anarchonixx]

Well, what's his budget?~

If you say a 2800+, $80 mobo basically leaves no money for RAM, then I'm afraid a no-future deal is the only thing he can afford. The only real option on the AMD side would be a socket A system, which can be adequate for WoW.

But you mention nothing about vid cards. Does he already own one he can use?

 

[The Bryophyte]

It sounds like his upgrade paths will be largely closed due to the budget he seems to be aiming for. I run WoW at 1280x1024 on the machine in my sig at 60+ fps all the time.

The celeron will run it reasonably, but it is probably the worst idea in terms of upgrading. I don't have specific advice really, but my machine is more than enough for WoW, as a guideline.