Older gamer seeks help from pros...Please

I am hoping to get 4-5 years of gaming use out of this as I did my current rig, and may attempt to overclock. I was hoping to build something which could easily upgrade later.
• Do these look good and work together?
• What is the best mobo and ram for this set up for several years of use?
• I want Vista 64 and 4 gigs of ram, what’s the difference between 4 x 1 verses 2 x 2 gigs in simple terms?
• Will the case hold the largest video card when I upgrade later?
• While there is always something around the corner, I don’t have to do this now. Is their anything around the corner that’s for sure worth a delay?

For now I will use my old video card, monitor and sound set up.

I read you guys often and this is my starting point:

LIAN LI PC-60APLUSII W Silver Aluminum ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad (Black) EPS12V 750W Power Supply
Western Digital Caviar RE WD5000ABYS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB
Sony NEC Optiarc Black 18X 2MB Cache SATA 18X DVD±R DVD Burner, OEM
Microsoft Windows Vista 64-Bit Ultimate for System Builders Single Pack DVD - OEM
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor

Thanks in advance for your help.

You'll always be waiting to buy if you wait on the newest Tech.

OP, your build is fine, though, 4 to 5 years your tech will be out of date and the only way to upgrade is by buying new parts.

If by upgrading you mean dropping in a new cpu and such, then you want a 775lga board, the Gigabyte P35-DS3R is a highly recommended board for the Q6600. That is the board I am currently looking at. It will also upgrade to the new Penryn line if you just want to upgrade your CPU. Though the Penryn will be the last CPU that MB will support as I hear the Nelahem(spelling?) cores will have a different pin setup, so you'll need a new MB for that CPU.

Stick with what you got, get the gigabyte DS3R MB and you should be good to go for a few years. Unless you do really intense gaming.

And stop picking on us OLD Gamers!!

Hey you old FART! , just kidding.

Your case should be fine for any size card and believe me those new high end cards are huge!, about 12in. baby thats big. I have the Lian Li 1000 series and while very sexy and well built, its a tight fit for those two big ole cards of mine. I had to bend a capacitor on my Xfi to fit that thing in between.

Your PS choice is a very good. A single 4GB module would be frightfully expensive compared to 2, 2GB so go for the 2GB kits. Plus if you overclock, less dense memory tends to overclock much easier.

For mobos, P35's give you one 16X PCIe slot, P38 two for SLI if you are a serious gamer, need I say more. However they are not yet available. If you don't want to wait, I have had great performance from my 680i SLI board, there you get 2 16X and 1 8X in the middle and will support your 1333 chips and higher with no issues. They are very easy to overclock.

I have 64bit Vista as well as 32bit XP on my system. Vista is like a high maintenance overdone prostitute while XP is more like a hard working gal that gets the job done, ain't to pretty but works.

I went with Q6600, GA-P35C-DS3R (this supports both DDR2 and DDR3), Lian-Li PC-V2000 (plenty of room even for the biggest video cards), same disks and PSU as you. The memory support list for that mobo is here:

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Product [...] -P35C-DS3R

I got Kingston HyperX, but OCZ Reaper is also a good option.

2x2 is better if you think you might upgrade to 8 GB of RAM later.

I'd get an LG burner, they're excellent. I'm afraid of using Sony products anyway, don't like spyware and rootkits

Don't know about Vista64. It looks better every week, with SP1 approaching and nVidia's drivers getting smarter in time. Could be a good idea by now. For now my Media Center still does the job, but I like the new Vista eye candy.

Edit: my first PC was a 386 SX/20 MHz. I guess I'am a bit older than either of you guys

That was an option for me, but I decided on the extra 5 mhz of speed and the additional 100+ bucks in cost

Haha don't think you are much older than me, if you are even older than me

Me 3.

Hey, the (moderately) old geeks of today ain't as clueless as the old geeks of yore because the old geeks of today were young geeks when this PC thing started. A fact the young geeks of today will well appreciate in ten years or so when they start getting dissed for being old

I agree with others for getting a P35 board but anyway in five years you most probably wont be able to change anything.My guess is you better upgrade your CPU and GPU in a couple of years and you`ll be fine.
I recently got myself a Q6600.I think it will be fine for a couple of years while i can upgrade my 8800 GTS anytime and still keep the 965 mobo i have since last year.
Anyway, it depends on how someone define "playable" for a game.Still i can always turn on my A1200 and enjoy it.