First build - please review

[Traajel]

Hi everyone

I'm looking to replace my aging S939 AGP system with a mid to high end gaming rig. This will be my first full build, although I have done simple upgrades such as memory, graphics cards and hard drives before.

I am hoping to keep the price below £700, but will go up to £750 if needed. However I cannot go a penny over £750.

I am fairly sensitive to system noise, so while I am hoping to do a small overclock I will not take it very far so the fans can still run relatively slowly.

The rig will be multibooting between XP-32, Vista-64 and PCLinuxOS. I know a 32-bit OS will not be able to address the full 4GB memory.

Could someone please review my spec and give any suggestions?

CPU
Q6000 OEM - £151.99
(I do not feel I will need the extra single threaded speed of the E8*** in the short term, and longer term the quad core will become more useful)
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/131823

Motherboard
GA-P35C-DS3R - £73.36
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/131173
(I will probably be installing more hard drives and RAIDing at a later date)

Memory
Geil Black Dragon 2x2GB - £64.04
(I know this is CAS5, but it is very cheap and I have heard very good things about it. Can anyone give any advice on whether I should go with this or if not then something else?)
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.jsp?GEL-BD644G

Graphics Card
Innovision 8800GTS G92 - £184.99
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/138551

Power Supply
Corsair HX 620W - £84.99
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/114941

CPU Cooling
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro - £14.99
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/105994

Hard disc
Samsung Spinpoint 500GB - £59.99
(Cannot afford to be buying a raptor and would prefer to use a single 500GB instead of 2x250 in RAID0 as I will likely get another couple of 500GB to run RAID5 later)
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130454

Floppy drive
Generic - £3.71

Optical drive
Samsung 20x SATA DVDRW with Nero - £18.66
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.jsp?SAM-S203D

Case
Antec P182 - £78.77
(Good airflow and much quieter than Antec 900)
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/126946

Total Price - £735.49

Any advice on this build would be much appreciated.

 

[Traajel]

Sorry - I forgot to mention... I will be gaming at a resolution of 1680x1050

 

[Jim_L9]

What games? It looks like a nice solid build for your budget. If you get a G0 Q6600 you should be able to get to ~3.0 GHz with that cooler.

 

[Traajel]

I will probably be looking at things like UT3, C&C3, Medieval 2: Total War, Bioshock, Oblivion, World in Conflict etc. Might give Crysis another go, but I was pretty unimpressed last time I played it. (I know I wont be able to play Crysis on max settings or anything in DX10 mode!)

Q6600 from Ebuyer is guaranteed G0, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Thanks for your help

 

[WR2]

I like your choices.
You can probably do away with the floppy drive. A USB Flash Drive is a better option.

 

[Traajel]

I doubt I'll need the floppy drive myself, but for the sake of £3, I figure along the lines of "why not"

 

[mikeccuk2005]

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2216&page=4
1: you are still better bugget with the p31
2: IF you on a low res display better go with 8800gt instead (and well maybe 3850s)
3: http://www.eclipsecomputers.com sells 800mhz ddr2 1GB at £11 (my lappy got a 667 cas5 qorks quite well, dont know about this 1 through..)
4: would you actually need 500GB? i suggest raid 3 of 120s (SATA2 ofcorse)
5: 64bit is junked for now. i heard there's a way you can get 4gb on the 32bit (why would you buy 2 copies of windows when you only get 8%+ performance and didnt use for generial purposes)