[Hollywood]

Put it this way, when I build systems for people, the price usually comes to around 700.00 without the monitor. Now this system usually includes:

P4 3.0 ghz or AMD equivelant
Asus/Abit motherboard with built-in audio and LAN card, SATA AGP 8x etc..
512MB DDR400 RAM such as Geil or Kingston
120GB 8mb cache HD or 10k SATA Raptor drive plus IDE equivelant
ATI 9800 pro (used to be 9600 pro before the price drop)
NEC 8x DVD-R/DVD+R
Average Case with decent power supply

Now that doesn't include labor, but you get the point. You can get a better system for that kind of money.