Help me please :)

Hi Guys, nice to meet you all.

I want to built a gaming rig with a budget of about £600. I do have some things that I would like in my Rig but I do not know if they are all cross-compatible :S I'm pretty much a clueless idiot

1. I'm just gonna use any old case, don't really care. If it has a built-in fan then that's a plus!

2. I preferably want a Quad-Core Intel, but I am tempted by the venom.

3. I only want around 1 GB - 2 GB RAM, any decent ram will do.

4. One ATi Radeon HD 3870 512 Mb @ 2.5 GHz - cheapest please

5. A PSU that will juice my card, I'm not sure about this one.

6. A single 320 Gb HDD @ 7200 RPM.

7. Got a mouse, got decent earphones, and a keyboard - don't need em.

8. Is a X-fi etc Sound card really worth it ????

Please, please guys I would really appreciate any kind of help. I want to give this to my little brother for Christmas

If you could do this for me, because I do not know much. I usually stick to Dell as I am very casual with my gaming (2-3 hours a week) I know you guys have A LOT more knowledge on this than me. Thanks guys! If it goes above £600, you can cut out any really unneeded extras e.g. over-the-top cases and HDD. Once again, thanks

p.s. can this run CS:S on atleast 120 FPS? Full MSAA etc?

As hairycat points out any old case won't do, get good ventilation.

I'd stick with Intel right now as prices on Phenom are falling but Intel still looks best bet. And if you're getting a quad core and 3870 then you should go 2 gig for XP or 4 gig for Vista otherwise that lovely system will be slooow as hell swapfiling on any new games.

Pretty much any 3870 you can find should be great, make sure it has a good warranty and if you find one really cheap just post here or google it to find reviews etc.

Personally I wouldn't bother with a separate sound card but that's more down to you. It might give you a few extra FPS and if your brother's an audiophile he might notice the difference?

If you're not going for crossfire then look for any PSU's from the branded names, above 550w should be OK unless you're running lots of peripherals.

PS. By the time you get all this delivered and built it may be a New Year present ;-)

You should definitely have atleast 2GB RAM... 4GB if possible RAM is really cheap nowadays. A 3870 is a good card, go for it. Right now Intel's quad-cores are faster than AMD's and overclock better, but AMD's Phenom is cheaper (atleast here in the States).

As far as the Western Digital DRM thing... meh, this crap is happening all over the place, if you're gonna boycott them then you'll also have to boycott Microsoft, which I doubt will happen. WD makes excellent drives, if you find one go for it.