PC to bring a friend back to EQ

[Itchybottom]

Athlon II x2 210e should be sufficient CPU-wise and bang-for-buck
Some random cheap AM3 motherboard (I prefer 770 and 880 based chipsets, I also usually stick with Asus because they have ECC support on the budget boards -- but this won't be applicable to you)
2 gigs of budget Corsair or Kingston RAM (since you only have Windows XP, which is 32-bit)
Some nVidia GTS450 video card (Sparkle, is pretty cheap on NewEgg for example)
Whatever hard drive (I use Hitachi in production, but have some Samsung Spinpoints floating around too -- avoid Seagate)
Corsair power supply (any of the HX series will be fine), or maybe Antec True line.
Whatever case
Whatever monitor

It'll be overkill, but then again you're not throwing money completely away at yesterdays technology either. Used (or old stock hardware) vs this type of build, would be neck and neck price wise. Single core processor isn't a good idea building from scratch.