Moving on from my toaster of a laptop...

[kas]

You get a 1TB Western Digital (Green) HDD, 8GB Corsair DDR3 RAM, a good microatx board (aim for AMD FM2+ socket at that budget, low cost Intel let's you down in my experience), microtower and a half decent graphics card for that, just gotta keep an eye out for the power supply but a Corsair 430 should do the job. That's a sensible, good, upgradable and most importantly cost-effective machine which shouldn't let you down.

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Try this setup here: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/kBtxxr

AMD A6-6400K 3.9GHz Dual-Core Processor
MSI A55M-E35 Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard
Corsair Dominator 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Corsair Builder 430W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply

Just add a nice mini tower (http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/nanoxia-case-nxds4b) and perhaps some fans and you'll be bang on the money.

I have the same processor running safely at 4.2Ghz and it has a built in GPU which will last you another few months until you have the bucks to buy a decent graphics card (see http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/sapphire...-1003622sr for example).

EDIT: Oh yeah and make sure you buy boxed CPU's, it's safer and they come with a cooler as well (in this CPU's case anyway), don't buy the very cheapest parts and shop around for the best prices. It may take youi another few weeks to find your suitable configuration at your desired price, but if you pay attention you shouldn't have much of a problem. But you're Matt soooo....