OK I know it's not "hot" nor particularly exciting, but I haven't seen many budget builds on the Nashbar Aluminum Road frame so for your amusement, here it is. It's the basic road frame, Nashbar carbon fork with Origin 8 Pro headset, which amounts to a $188 frameset, weighing 2300 grams if you're curious about that. The total build is about $350 plus shipping and tax. It weighs a little over 20 pounds.
It has a Sunlite single-speed 44x170 Crankset - probably where I cheaped out the most - and Shimano Sora calipers and Shimano 2300 RD or will when Amazon gets around to shipping. Since the sharp-eyed reader has probably already noticed my oops on the downtube shifters I'll mention that the frame does have braze-ons but I was too cheap to order braze-on shifters and had to jury-rig the clamp. Rookie mistake.
The wheels are from another bike, and the saddle, seatpost and pedals I scrounged up. The result - so far it feels great, but I'll only really know after a few longer rides.