alright so I have been travelling across the land....searching far and wide. For what you may ask, not for pokemon, but for a PC that will not cost a college student an arm and a leg, but will place starcraft 2. So I think I may have found  my pc, i think I may have it. It is currently posted on woot.com and will only be there for the next 22 hours and they may run out before then, so I ask you fellow SC2 players and people that know how computers run, is this a worthy solution? or should I wait until black friday and stay outside a bestbuy and get a sony vaio laptop that may or may not run it on medium settings...someone help please : )

Nope, no videocard, and the cpu seems a bit slow. Build one yourself for like 500-600 and actually play with a good fps.

No, but that system is all decked out to play minesweeper and write emails if you're into that sort of thing :D

you're saying I could play some high level minesweeper? 
 @tankintheair315 I'd love to build a pc I just don't have 500-600 dollars college student holmes.
and if that won't help me what do you guys know about this Sony Vaio VPCEB3AFM/WI  ?

And the thing is I can currently "run" SC2 on my CQ60-615DX Notebook...at 10 frames per second on lowest settings so I was looking and it seems the woot computer at least meets minimum specs.

Looks like that Vaio also has integrated graphics so no real help there.

gah...the world is against me and my love-hate relationship with starcraft2 oh well

I really hate it when people say they can't afford shit because they are "students" and totally undersell the value of what their arm and leg is worth. I totally thought that as well until I did a little thing called accounting and really looked at how much money I spend on things every semester. I just said fuck it to buying books one semester and instead lived in the library constantly checking them out, and the result was instant 400 in the bank for a console and then some.  
 
Rant aside: 
 
That comp would probably not so much run SC2 as take it for a nice walk, it will probably be very low setting since it has integrated graphics card. Even if it had a graphics card, with the same specs for everything else, the best one can hope for is medium settings, but not playing any games with 8 people or else shit starts lagging. So overall, no. Your best bet is to stand in line on Black Friday and give enough arm and leg jobs to get something more powerful. 

thanks all, very helpful stuff guys.

" Looks like that Vaio also has integrated graphics so no real help there. "

  http://techreport.com/articles.x/19560/2

 The tech report system guide should help. I've linked their "Econobox"-system. It would cost you $540, but I think you can probably downgrade some stuff to last generation to shave quite a few dollars of that.
 
However, I suggest you just save up about $600-700 and get a decent pc. It'll cost you a bit more now, but it'll save you money later.

ok so I understand the prevailing idea here is to just build my own pc eventually, but what about this?  http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Holiday_Special_II/ it is claimed that it can run SC2 on high at about 53 frames per second and other video games as well on a page that displays a HOST of PC's and to my knowledge this is a fairly good deal right?

" ok so I understand the prevailing idea here is to just build my own pc eventually, but what about this?   http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Holiday_Special_II/ it is claimed that it can run SC2 on high at about 53 frames per second and other video games as well on a page that displays a HOST of PC's and to my knowledge this is a fairly good deal right? "

i built a £200 desktop that can run sc2 at max 
its not hard

" @Thule: You are like a savior dude! I've been searching for a while all over the place for a PC under the 600-800 range that was reasonable and seeing as I have very little if any computer know how it's hard to find what you need and don't need, so thanks dude. I will surely tell everyone how my PC building endeavors go.   Quick question though what kind of PC do you have if I may ask? "

" @hicks91 said:

" @Fragstoff: k 
 
nvidia 9500 gt 1gb  http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=226648&C=Froogle&U=226648&T=Module
cant remember motherbiard 
AMD quad core @ 2.9 Ghz   http://www.comwales.com/eshop/product.php?productid=131884
 4GB ram 2x  http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=15439&tid=frooct  not exactly what i got, mine were cheaper and slightly better, but you get the idea i managed this by getting the boring parts, hard drives, power supply, case off of business's in my area that were throwing them away and hunting around for the best deal of other stuff "

that can't run SC2 maxxed out properly. unless you consider 5-15fps acceptable. "

All you really need to play Starcraft is an Intel Core i3 system with a GTS 450 or HD5750 with 4 gigs of RAM, to run the game on medium/high quite well. Starcraft is CPU intensive, video card is great for rendering, hence why I usually go nVidia when I build systems for customers doing Starcraft. 
 
Other option would be an AMD quad core (An Athln II x4 635 would be nice) system with 4 gigs of ram. Same price as Intel i3 roughly, little more power) but you're restricted to using ATi, since nVidia and AMD don't play too well together anymore after AMD bought ATi.

" @Thule: i realize that 
 
@hicks91 said: 

" i built a £200 desktop that can run sc2 at max its not hard "

"

a guy i know from another forum wrote this  if you're interested 
 

 This guide was initially written to alleviate the need for threads called "How do I built PC". It largely still serves this purpose, but I've also hijacked it to make occasional suggestions about which components to buy. As ever, the computer world changes more rapidly than I can be bothered to update this document, so check the date below before running off to buy any parts mentioned here.

This is revision 2, written on 07 October 2009. The sections on CPUs, RAM, graphics cards, hard drives, and motherboards have been updated to reflect new developments in tech and the market.

HOW STUFF WORKS

This bit of the guide is for newbies - a brief overview. The main parts of a computer are:

• Motherboard aka 'mobo' - The main board that everything plugs in to.
• Processor aka CPU - The main chip that executes your programs and does all the things with 1s and 0s. This does a lot of work and gets quite hot, so it comes with a heatsink (a big lump of metal) to dissipate the heat. You might want to consider getting a better heatsink than the one that comes with the CPU (called the 'stock' heatsink), especially if you're going to try to get your CPU to run faster than it's supposed to (overclocking).
• Memory aka RAM - An intermediate store between your hard drive and CPU. The CPU can access things in memory much, much faster than it can read from the hard disk, so stuff that gets used frequently gets temporarily stored in RAM. Think of it as the difference between having a bigger desk (more space for things you can grab close to you) and a bigger filing cabinet (which will allow you to store more stuff overall, but you need to get out of your chair to reach it).
• Hard drive aka HD - The filing cabinet mentioned above. This is what actually stores everything on your computer. Stuff in RAM disappears when you turn your computer off; stuff on your HD stays there.
• Graphics card - The graphics card offloads the graphics processing work from the CPU. This leaves the CPU free to do other things, like work out what that bad guy is going to do next. Graphics cards are very heavily specialised, so they push pixels blindingly fast. For this reason, they usually end up being the most expensive single component in any given system.
• Power supply aka PSU - Supplies juice to your components.
• Case / cooling - A box for your stuff to go in. Adding fans to the box helps draw cool air in and push hot air out. This is a good thing.

BUYING BITS

This section will go out of date quickly. If you're reading this in a year or more's time, any information here will probably be old and useless to you. Even six months is a long time in the computing world. While I'm going to give suggestions here (which applies now, as I write it), the best advice I can give is do your research. If you want to know which of two CPUs or graphics cards is better, type them both into Google next to each other and you'll very likely find some reviews, complete with benchmarks. Looking at the bar charts will tell you far more about which to buy than I will. I can't recommend this enough.

Processor
We're going to talk about multi-core processors a lot here. For the uninitiated, these are a set of two (or more) processors packaged into a single chip that you slot into the motherboard. While I wouldn't go as far as to say that multi-core processing has become a reality, it's certainly the case that any PC you build now should at least be dual-core. Games are now beginning to do a decent job of supporting more than two cores, so if you do a lot of video editing or other CPU-intensive work that's not games, going for a triple or quad-core processor may be worth your money.

The two main companies that produce CPUs are AMD and Intel. At the time of writing, Intel have the most powerful processors. If money is no object to you, buy a Core i7CPU. These are top of the line (with a price to match), and a system with one of these in will be upgradeable for quite a while to come. However, things get a little more murky if you're not rolling in money. Ideally, the Core i5 CPUs are the mid-range versions of the i7s, but they're still fairly expensive.

The Core i3 chips are meant to fill out the budget end of the range, but they're not out yet. For a budget to mid-end PC I'd have to recommend either a Core 2 Duo (some things never change!) or a Phenom X3 - the latter only if the extra core will be meaningful to you. These offer a good price/performance ratio if you can't afford to go to the awesomeness that is i7.

Which processor you get is very much down to your budget. Do be aware that the cheaper Core 2s overclock very, very well, so if you're an advanced user you can save yourself a fair amount of money by buying a one of these and overclocking it. However, this takes some skill and you may end up frying your CPU (although that's less likely these days), so it's a bit of a risk. If you're going to overclock, you might want to think about getting a better heatsink, too, although the Core 2s tend to overclock pretty well on the stock cooler.

The other thing to say about CPUs is that you should be going for a 64-bit processor - and indeed a 64-bit version of your favourite OS. There is no excuse not to do this now that drivers have matured; the benefits you'll get from being able to add lots of RAM are enormous.

Memory
The best advice regarding memory is to cram as much RAM into your PC as you can possibly manage. RAM is cheap, but yet more of it will give your PC a huge performance boost. If you're going for Core i7, I recommend you read this article, as it'll tell you way more than I ever could. Even if you're not going for Core i7, the "cram as much in as you can" advice still holds true. At least 4GB. Also, make sure your motherboard has the capacity for more RAM than you initially buy, so you can upgrade later. 4GB is good for the time being, but in a couple of years you'll appreciate being able to double that.

Bear in mind that RAM runs at different speeds, and you need to make sure that your CPU and motherboard can support these speeds, otherwise your Ferrari will eternally be stuck in residential 30mph zones. If you're going to go for the more blistering memory speeds such as 1333MHz, 1600MHz, or even 1866MHz, you absolutely must get both a CPUand a motherboard that supports that speed, otherwise it'll run at the lowest speed of the three elements (CPU, RAM, and motherboard). I can't stress this enough. For a mid to high-end gaming machine you can probably afford to go for DDR3 RAM, although lower-end builders can probably get away with sticking to DDR2.

Graphics card
Your graphics card choices are between AMD and NVidia. The sweet spot for graphics cards is usually aroudn the £120-150 mark. Much less than this, and you start getting crud; much more than this, and you're paying more than you should to stay on the bleeding edge. As it happens, AMD and NVidia are pretty evenly matched in the mid-level at the moment. The two cards I would recommend are the AMD Radeon 4870 and the NVidia GTX260, both of which can be had for around £120 if you keep your eyes peeled. Each card has its pros and cons. The AMD cards have native support for DirectX 10.1, which makes your games look prettier. But the NVidias have support for PhysX and CUDA, which are ways to do physics - and other traditionally "difficult" computation - on the graphics card, freeing up your CPU to do other things. This is a tough call; personally, I don't think PhysX is used to particularly good effect in games (hey look, you can kick paper up off the floor in Batman: Arkham Asylum! Big deal), so I'd personally go with AMD.

As an aside, the next step up from the aforementioned cards are the 4890 and GTX275, which are around the £175-200 mark. Also, a note on the NVidia model naming conventions: as a general rule, GTX > GT > GTS > GS. However, I reiterate my earlier advice: read reviews and look at benchmarks before making up your mind. Graphics cards vary hugely and the nomenclature is confusing. Don't fall into the trap of thinking more expensive is better - read reviews and find out for yourself.

For those who are upgrading PCs from the Stone Age (i.e. three or four years old), you may well bump into the AGP problem. A while ago, motherboard manufacturers started supplying a slot for graphics cards called PCI-Express. This is much, much better than the previous type of slot, called AGP. If you have an older computer, you may well have an AGP slot, and if you buy a PCI-Express card, it's not going to fit. Find out what type of slot you have and make sure you buy the right card. People do still manufacture AGP cards, but if your computer is that old, I'd seriously consider a new build.  
 
  Hard drive
They're all the same, right? Not quite. There are three issues to consider: size, speed, and connector.

• Size - More jiggabytes is better, and space is really cheap these days. At the time of writing, you can buy a 500GB drive for around £40, and a 1TB drive for £60. This is peanuts. If you have a large music or film collection, buy lots of storage. With lots of storage comes the increased horribleness of your hard drive dying. You need some kind of backup; at the very least, buy a second drive, put it in an external enclosure, and copy off stuff you care about every week. I don't have time to go through it here, but you might also want to look at a RAID 1 configuration, where you put two identical drives in your computer, and all your data gets written to both drives. So if one fails, you still have the other one.
• Speed - Measured in rpm. For the love of God and all that is holy, don't go below 7200rpm. If you're rich and flamboyant, you will notice amazing performance games if you shell out for a 10,000rpm drive, but they are still very expensive.
• Connector - Like graphics cards, hard drives come in two flavours - those with IDE connectors (old) and those with SATA connectors (new). If you're building a new computer, buy SATA - it's just plain better, and you don't have huge ribbons cluttering up the inside of your case. If you're upgrading an old computer, check to see if your motherboard has SATA connectors. It might not, so be careful.

Motherboard
There's some overlap here. The main challenge when you're buying a motherboard is to make sure you get one with all the right connectors. The list of pluggy things you need to get right is as follows:

• CPU - Obviously, it needs to fit your CPU. Check the socket type of your CPU and make sure the motherboard supports it. Then go on the manufacturer's website and check again. Some motherboards will support newer CPUs, but only with a BIOS upgrade. You can't do a BIOS upgrade unless the motherboard supports the CPU that's plugged in. This can cause problems, and the only solution is to go and buy a second, cheap CPU just for the sake of doing the BIOS upgrade. This is a pain. Don't make the mistake - be very, very thorough in checking this.
• Graphics card slot - AGP is dead, long live PCI-Express. If you're an enthusiast gamer, you have two options for multi-card craziness. NVidia has SLI, AMD has CrossFire. You need to make sure that the motherboard you buy supports these technologies, although I believe this is slightly less important for CrossFire as you can achieve it with a little bit of ribbon cable that connects the two cards. If you're going for SLI, make sure your motherboard says it's SLI compatible and make sure that both SLI slots run at x16. If they run at x8, you'll get half the speed. Any cards you put into an SLI configuration have to be identical; CrossFire ones don't. If you're super-crazy, it's possible to dedicate one of the cards in an SLI configuration solely to physics (in PhysX-supported games).
• Bus Speed - This is the 1333MHz RAM thing I was talking about earlier. Most modern motherboards will support 1066MHz; you'll have to pay more for one that supports 1333MHz or above.
• Hard drive connector - IDE is dead, long live SATA. A motherboard which supports SATA will be very likely to have some IDE connectors (also called ATA or PATA) too. Some DVD drives still use IDE and not SATA, but I'd recommend buying a SATA one though - they're the same price.

Motherboards tend to come with onboard 5.1 sound, so it's generally not worth getting an extra sound card unless you're an audiophile. Do also consider how easy the motherboard will make overclocking for you, if you're interested in such things: many these days will allow you to skip messing around in the BIOS altogether and just do it from Windows. This is a Nice Thing. Finally, you might want to check for FireWire ports, if you're into camcorders or are an Apple fanboy.

Power Supply
First of all, you need to calculate how much power your system will use: Google "power supply calculator" and put in details of all the parts you're planning to buy. Use generous estimates. Then take the number it givse you and then add 100W. You want a power supply that will give you that much juice. This gives you room for expansion and a little overhead just in case. It's better to be over than under - if you don't have enough juice, your computer will be unreliable to say the least.

Secondly, make sure you buy a good power supply. Power supplies are often neglected, and this is bad, because a good power supply will last you a long time while being reliable and more efficient. A bad power supply will explode and possibly take your computer with it. It's worth paying more for a good power supply. Once you've found your wattage rating, find the  most expensive  power supply that gives you enough juice and then work downward to the highest point you can reasonably afford.

Bits and bobs
Other stuff you'll need are a DVD-RW drive (you can pick up a combi one for £15 or so), and a case. Choose your case carefully, depending on what sort of person you are. A good case will last you many, many builds, so it's worth splashing out for a good one. Your two main priorities should be noise and cooling. Quiet cases are expensive, but worth it - the sound of loud fans can be very distracting. All cases should at the very least have a fan at the front and a fan at the back, but the more fans the better. If you've got your heart set on a case and it doesn't come with any fans, you'll have to buy some. You might want to buy some extra fans anyway, so have a look at the spaces the case gives you for fans (it should say how many of each size fans are supported). Bear in mind that fans come in three sizes - 80mm, 90mm, and 120mm. Larger fans push more air through on each rotation, so they can spin more slowly and will therefore be quieter.

You might also want a wireless card if you're into the wireless networking shizzle. Again, make sure that the connector is supported by your motherboard. The majority of network cards are PCI, but there might be a few that run off PCI-Express. Check.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Find a friend who's built a computer before and get them to go through it with you. It's fairly self-explanatory, and quite difficult to mess up - if it doesn't fit or snap into place, you're Doing It Wrong. I will assume you are not a complete retard and won't try to cut things up to make them fit. The motherboard manual will also walk you through installing most of the bits, and the manuals for individual components may also be useful (especially the CPU). I'd advise getting an anti-static wrist strap and connecting it to something earthed - the chances that you'll short something are fairly slim, but they're only a fiver. Finally, do expect injuries - I've never built a PC without inflicting some kind of minor nick or cut on myself. Have tissues handy just in case 

WHERE TO BUY
People have mixed experiences with individual online stores, so don't take this as gospel truth. Here's a list anyway:
www.ebuyer.co.uk  I don't like ebuyer. Their returns policy is awful, and the courier they use is terrible. I really don't like their customer service.
www.scan.co.uk  I love Scan. They're simple and cheap and generally have the best variety of components after ebuyer. I've never had trouble with any of their stuff.
www.overclockers.co.uk  A touch more expensive than ebuyer and Scan, but a very solid choice. Recommended.
www.dabs.co.uk  Often quite overpriced, poor customer service. Avoid if possible.
www.aria.co.uk  I've not used Aria before, but I've heard good things.
www.amazon.co.uk  Yes, Amazon sell (some) PC parts! And I have had nothing but good and wonderful things from Amazon - although watch out who you're buying from, as there's plenty of Amazon Marketplace stuff up these days. You'll get good service from Amazon directly, but I can't vouch for the companies who sell their stuff through them.

I think that covers most things. If you've got any suggestions for things to be included or have spotted a glaring error, feel free to let me know. I hope it helps. 

Get anything with a decent video card and you'll be fine.
 
I play on a $350, 2 year old laptop and my FPS rarely drops below 30.

" @Thule: heh it was more for him not for me, i already know all of the details and felt it was a good enough overview  "