Metro 2033 is one of my favorite PC games in the last few years. I could play it for days, and have.

Many of you think Metro 2033 will take some exotic hardware to run properly, but that’s not really the case. You can build a PC from scratch for about $500 that will run games like Metro 2033, Crysis 2, Far Cry 2, and most others with relative ease.

Now you might not be able to run the games at max settings, but for the money, you’ll get a really solid experience with DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 games. I play Far Cry 2 on a similar system, minus two CPU cores, and it runs great with the settings well tailored for my 22″ LCD. Super high resolutions or heavy Anti-Aliasing settings would require slightly more in the video card department than what’s described, but not by much.

What we’re talking about here is the computer, and not a fancy one – it’s designed to give you enough power to run the newest games, while costing about $300 less than buying a similar PC “off the shelf”. You’ll have to supply your own OS (a dual boot XP/Windows 7 is recommended), monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers – which makes this computer a perfect choice for upgrading an old, but otherwise well working computer system. I would suggest at least a 19″ monitor for playing these types of games.

The cost of all the parts is from Newegg.com, and the links go directly to the product page.

Now, this case might not look like much…well, it isn’t. It’s just a solid small form factor desktop case, with plenty of room for our needs. The stock power supply will not be used – they’re simply not enough power for this setup.

The CoolMax MP-550B is good, efficient (80 Plus) power supply that will provide more than enough juice to power the components listed here. A more powerful video card would justify something closer to 650 watts, but the 550 will power everything listed here very well.

Biostar isn’t usually a name that brings about notions of a “performance” PC motherboard, and they shouldn’t – Biostar motherboards are cheap. They don’t have a lot of bells and whistles, but they get the job done. The A780L3L is a decent quality motherboard with 16x PCI Express 2.0 and support for our Quad Core AMD and DDR3 memory.

The CPU is an AMD Quad Core 3.0Ghz, more than enough power for almost any game. This is also a 95 watt CPU, which creates less heat, and less draw on the power supply.

The GeIL 2 x 2GB DDR3 kit is a simple, 4GB 1600mhz memory kit. We’ll be running the ram at 1333 for stability’s sake, but it’s nice to know the extra wiggle room is there in case we decide to look into overclocking this rig in the future.

Aside from the CPU, the Video Card is probably the biggest bang-for-your-buck performance part in a gaming PC. The PowerColor AX5770 is a really good card for the price. It features 1GB of GDDR5 memory, a core running at 850mhz, HDMI and D-SUB connections, and DirectX11 support. It’s enough video card to play most games reasonably well, though there is certainly room for improvement (and more $).

As for the optical drive, at first we opted for an average DVD+/-RW drive, but with many new movies (and soon enough, games) coming out on BluRay, we decided on a DVD Combo drive with the ability to at least read BluRay disks. This simple LITE-ON unit serves the purpose, for about $48.

And because it’s Newegg.com, you’ll actually save a few more buck, as most of these parts also come with mail in rebates.