Review My Build (And An OEM Question)

Okay, getting ready to build this thing, I'd like you guys to just double check my list and make sure I've got everything, and that I'm not buying something that's going to screw me over later on.

The main purpose of this system is to start somewhat small, and remain realistic. I don't believe I'll ever have an interest in spending the money required by Crossfire or SLI, so I'm building this with the intent to perhaps, upgrade the processor and graphics card in the future, possibly some RAM and another hard drive, but nothing massive and nothing immediate.

My biggest concerns with my current build are:
1: My choice of motherboard seems a little odd... Two PCIe 16x slots with a P965 chipset? Well... it's reviewed well and it's cheap.
2: My powersupply/case combo. I've heard horror stories about getting the combination, but it's cheap... and it's Rosewill...
3: I really want to use this thing to play Oblivion, FEAR, and future games. Will there be a huge different between my current 2.4 P4, Radeon 9700 Pro setup? Or will it be just a small change? I've never seen the game on X-box 360, but I've been told that it can look incredible, and it can be hard to tell through screenshots.
4: Which cords am I missing? I'm buying some parts OEM, but I'm not sure which cables I'm going to need to slap this rig together.

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6400
Motherboard: ECS P965T-A (V1.0) Intel P965 Express
Graphics Card: Sapphire Radeon X1900XT
RAM: pqi POWER Series 2 x 1GB DDR2
Hard Drive: SAMSUNG SpinPoint P Series 160GB Hard Drive (OEM)
DVD Drive: NEC 16X DVD±R DVD IDE/ATAPI (OEM)
Speakers: Labtec ARENA 5.1 Speakers
Monitor: Hanns·G JW-199DPB 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor
Case/PSU: Rosewill Computer Case 450W
Keyboard/Mouse: Logitech Internet Pro Desktop

Thanks a lot guys!

Frm what i can c, ur setup is good, but i hav to agree wit Raven_87, u need better psu esp. wit good railings (eventho u probb. wont oc/sli).i didnt check ur links, but does it hav active pfc?

about cables, if ur dvd drv use pata, then u only need 1 SATA n 1 PATA cable.

the power supply will do if u donmt want a better 1

but i would recommend perhaps an antec 500watt or so PSU

your new build will absolutly demolish your old one. at least 5-10 times faster in some things.

There is no point to buy the E6400. Get the E6300 and consider a RAID0 with two 250GB 16MB cache hdds. It will speed up your system a lot. I mean LOT.

Its not necessarily about wattage. But I'm sure the PSU that comes with that case only carries a single 12v rail...MAYBE providing 20A on the line.
I bought a Rosewill 550 that has 24A on a single rail. Cost me around $50
So judging by the price of the case/psu package -- your unit will be of a less.......'quality.

The other two rails (your 3 and 5) I"m sure arent much more impressive.

Like Wusy said though, you can try and run it. I"m sure it will take a slight overload during boot - but if it lasts a long period of time, I'll be astonished.

Okay... well, what I've come to conclude is that I need a different motherboard. That MSI board is an attempt at SLI and Crossfire without the actual support from ATI and Nvidia. It requires a special board from MSI to be plugged into the 1x slot to activate the 2nd slot. They haven't released, and most likely won't, that special board. Either way, it sounds convoluded.

I appreciate the feedback when it comes to the power supply, I'll see if I can't find something else. There's a couple of cases I like, but I'm not certain of a good powersupply brand. I've been told Antec, but all of their stuff seems a little expensive and carries the SLI ready endorsement... making me think I'm paying extra for a label.

As far as the RAM goes, my choice of 533 comes from the 1066 FSB, I don't plan to overclock my system, and I remember hearing that Conroe works best with 1:1 timing.

maybe i'm wrong but for a 1:1 timing would u not need ram like this

Link

this is actual 1066mhz ram, your original choice is only 533mhz

That is correct from what I have seen over the years at Toms. A Dual DDR 400 ram setup will feed a 800 MHZ FSB processor at the same rate (400x2) that it runs at, thus meeting the theoretical bandwidth available. So 533 will more than meet the processor needs and will not be any improvement. In fact I went with 667 because there were so many complaints about the flavors of DDR2-800 misbehaving with various incarnations of the 965 chipset and Bios. There has been no issues with the use of 533 or 667 with it that I have found. Just to be on the safe side I stayed with ECS's tested Kingston value ram 1GBx2 Dual kit at 667.