[Thermodyne]

Nothing better in that budget range, unless you catch a promo. IMHO, the vid card is easy to update, so is a place to cut cost on an initial build. Also, he could get a comparable NVIDIA card if he prefers that flavor. I put most of the money in the CPU and Main board, as they are the parts that tend to stay in service the longest. One of the biggest mistakes many people make is skimping on the main board. They save $50, but end up with an unstable system. If I was going to push it a little higher, then I’d add another SATA drive and set the pair up as a stripe set. That would give him a noticeable increase in performance. The Vid card only comes into play with a few high end games, and certainly is not needed for SE. If he has concerns about rendering, then we need to have a talk about Vid cards that would break his budget twice over all by themselves.