$400 build for a friend

The next build is about 100 over initial budget but is pretty damn peak for about half a G. Latest technologies with plenty of graphical power.

Intel Core i3 - 530

Gigabyte H55M

GSkill (2x1) PC3-12800

HIS HD5670 IceQ <--- Has a better cooler, reputable name, and GDDR5.

SeaGate Barracuda 7200.12 320GB/16MB <--- The 500GB/16MB is in stock at 54.99 That's a lot more for 5 dollars if you feel you need it. They both have free shipping right now.

CoolerMaster eXtreme RS-460

CoolerMaster Elite 330 Mid-ATX

The Core i3 has an Integrated Graphics Processor (IGP) That is about the equivalent to a GeForce 9300-to-9400GT. It benches in between the two. It does not support DX11 AFAIK, but has pretty intense power and would shave 100 dollars off of the build putting it back into the tolerable budget. From what I understand, it uses the CPU a little for graphics processing and taps into the Physical RAM for use as VRAM, which is a bit inefficient, but it's nice.

I'd also like to note that, though the Gigabyte H55M has two PCI-E slots, you CAN NOT SLI or CFx on the board. Neither the H55 or H57 chipset can support multi GPU setups. They have a limitation in the available lanes for PCI-E (20x) [16x] and [4x in the 16x format]. The actual x16 is a 2.0.
 
^ No xfire/sli, but I think you can use a dual card though, can't you? That plus an nvidia card for physx in the other slot would still make a pretty powerful machine.

That's a winner in my book.
 
The card in the other slot would need to operate at 4x. The Chipset on this board only offers 20 lanes to distribute. 16x and 4x.
 
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