LOL, my barebones kit with 3.0mhz dual core, and 2gb ram was less than $250. I added 1gb more ram for 15 bucks and got a GeForce 9500GT for like $80. Motherboard was good but a bit old, no PCI 2.0, although I did not need it.
A free 22" monitor is hard to beat, although IBM's Lenovo was...