Shipping costs are generally pretty good on newegg. Sometimes they have free/half off/etc. shipping deals as well. That tiger site and tomshardware do a lot of deals as well.
Tami said:
I can buy the combo deal and still be $58.51 under budget, so I could buy a full case that's compatible with everything else still, if case size is important and a mini-tower can't fit most graphics cards.
It's less the size of the case and more the motherboard inside of it. That is the big thing every other component plugs into. Sometimes micro boards are advertised as "PCI-E" which is what every graphics card plugs into nowadays - and yet like Helios said their physical size is compatible with the graphics card. Unlucky.
Unfortunately, a good motherboard is generally pretty expensive, as is a good graphics card. And both of those things require a good power supply. This is why if you could get a new PC built by a shop in town (labor costs are generally not that bad), that will be your best bet.
- You can start off with a good motherboard and power supply and try to get the best bang for your buck
- Then go for a processor and graphics card. Try to get an AMD processor and an ATI/AMD card, or an Intel processor and an nVidia/EVGA card. Don't mix Intel with ATI/AMD or AMD with nVidia/EVGA
- A hard drive with a good read/write speed is important, too, otherwise your graphics card will be going too fast for your hard drive
- Most games nowadays require a lot of memory too, but 12GB-16GB is enough and has been for 3 years. 8GB was only 'too little' starting a year ago
That said, like we say in compy service, the mobo has to go. You want one that is not micro for reasons that it might not fit a good graphics card.