Hi there. I'm very new to building PCs and want to make up a machine for a bit of gaming (nothing too extreme) and mainly photoshoping and some work with vector graphics.
 
My budget is approx £450 and I have a monitor, and some harddrives, and optical drives already.
 
I've done a fair bit of reading and my current spec is as follows:-
 

• Antec Sonata 3 Super Black Mini Tower Case with 500W aPFC PSU - £78.60
• Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro - P4 up to 4.4GHz - S775 Dual/Quad Core Ready - The Favourite One! - £14.79
• Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L, iP35 Express, S 775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 1066/667/800, SATA II, ATX - £59.81
• Intel Core 2 Duo, E8400, Wolfdale Core, S775, 3.0 GHz, 1333MHz, 6MB Cache - £139.81
• 2GB (2x1GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12 - £32.89  
• Asus GeForce 9600 GT 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - £113.96
• TOTAL COST £439.86

Does that seem like a good rounded selection? Are there any places I could cut costs and spend them better eslewhere? Any help or recommendations greatly appreciated.

I take it it won't be overclocked at least initially?
 
Those are perfect for a mid-range gaming build. I suggest you get 4GB of ram or more for photoshopping. You know how big scans/photos can be in higher DPI. + undo's in memory. The DDR2 is priced almost the lowest right now. If you wait, they may go up in prices.

Cheers - was wondering that. I supose 4 sticks of 1GB, or would I be better off going for 2 sticks of 2GB?

??? Sorry, what does that mean?

Undos in memory = how many steps saved in Photoshop's history. If you want to play with overclocking later, it's supposed to be easier with 2 slots filled instead of 4 I think.

Thanks.

2x2gb gives you the option of going up to 8gb in the future without having to replace all the ram.  I'd go with 2x2gb over 4x1gb.

Gah! Having trouble sourcing the E8400 here in the UK.
How would these serve?

• Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 2 x 2.66Ghz 6Mb Cache 1333 FSB Dual Core Processor £125.67
• Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2 x 2.66Ghz 4Mb Cache 1333 FSB Dual Core Processor £124.49

Also, I need to get an OS and a monitor. I was thinking Vista 64, and a Samsung 226 22" because of the amazing reviews. Sound reasonable? I know it's a big screen for the system, but a mate raves about his...

Any Yorkdale will be faster than Conroe/Allendale clock for clock. Say, 2Ghz Yorkie vs 2Ghz Conroe, Yorkie wins hands down.
 
Go with E8200 if that's the only one available. Or you can look for E3110 which is the same as E8400 for less! Make sure the mobo supports E8400.
 
Wow. *bows down to Gigabyte*. The board ALREADY supports E3110:
 
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support [...] uctID=2599
 
32-bit OS will see up to 3.5GB of ram. 64-bit will see more than 4GB. If you plan to use more than 4GB, go 64.
 
Samsung flatpanels hands down. I am looking at mine.

Thanks Akhilles.
 
I think I'll go for the E8200 and the Samsung 22" screem with 5ms response - that way I can upgrade on the graphics front - to a 8800GT, and on a p35 mobo.