I received the components for my new PC last Monday and built it the same day. I am pleased to report that I've yet to encounter a single problem in 1 week of use and it all booted up and worked perfectly at the first time of asking.

Here's a rundown of my new PC:

Case: Antec P182B Black - £79.99
CPU: Core 2 Duo E6420
CPU HSF: Thermaltake Big Typhoon 120 VX
Thermal Paste: Arctic Silver Ceramique
Motherboard: Asus P5N-E SLI, NF650i SLi
Ram: OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) DDR26400CL 4-4-4-15 Platinum Revision 2 XTC
Graphics Card: Gainward GeForce 8500GT 256MB, PCI-E, SilentFX
Power Supply: 520W Corsair HX Modular PSU
Hard Disk: 320 Gb Seagate Barracuda 7200.10
DVD Writer: NEC/Sony Optiarc AD-7170S-0B

Here's 2 Pic's of my new components before installation:

http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/9469/newpc1cb8.jpg
http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/4003/newpc2io7.jpg

Obviously the odd selection is the graphics card as most people with this setup would have went with something a bit more powerful (I was originally going to get a x1950pro) but I don't play many games and the ones I do play are quite old. Also I was very interested in the new HD decode acceleration as I wanted to start downloading HD movie rips.

What attracted me to the gainward card is that it's a completely re-tooled 8500GT with the GPU running at 600mhz (instead of the usual 450mhz) and GDDR3 memory running at 600mhz as well (in place of ddr2@400mhz). To top it all off it comes with a passive 2 slot AC designed cooler (quietness was a MAJOR concern for me) and it only costs £60!

Here's a link to the manufacturer's page on the card:
http://www.gainward.net/en/product [...] v8613.html

I'm using the card on a widescreen samsung monitor @1280x768 and this card is rock solid for games and more importantly HD movies (im using XP Pro\media portal\PowerDVD 7.2 ultra with the latest nvidia Purevideo HD software). 1080P Bluray\HD DVD cpu utilisation is averaging between 30% & 35%. 8.5Gb x264 1080P recodes are averaging around 25% cpu usage. This obviously produces excellent video playback with no frames dropped or system sluggishness.

With regard to gaming I don't have any of the current standard benchmark games so I run a benchmark on 3Dmark2006 & the new lost planet demo.

3DMark 2006 score: 3360 @1280x768 (default settings)
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=2049874

Lost Planet score: Average: 28fps, Snow: 23fps, Cave: 33fps
http://img501.imageshack.us/img501 [...] rk1rr6.jpg

My Temps are:
CPU Idle: 32C, CPU Load: 37C, GPU Idle: 46C, GPU Load: 53C
(3x120mm case fans set to low & cpu fan set to low, which also makes the system almost inaudible)

Obviosuly this is with everything running at stock speeds, no OC & running XP Pro SP2 with the usual apps already installed (antivirus, firewall etc).

The 3DMark benchmarks place the system on par\slightly behind a 7600GT which for the price (and given that the memory is clocked slower) is very good as you also get a lot of added value with the 8500GT.

Sorry I went on a bit there, but do you guys have any reccomendations on how to go about OC'ing this system\good settings to use with the Asus P5N-E SLI mobo. I've already updated the Bios to 0602 and set the memory to run @4-4-4-15 2T.

Thanks.