Hey. I'm planning to get a new PC soon. It will be for gaming and i'll try to overclock it (my first time). Any advice or critique on my setup would be appreciated. Thanks.

Processor: E8400
Motherboard: MSI P35 Platinum or Gigabyte P35-DS3R
Ram: 2x2 Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800
Video Card: XPERTVISION 8800GT 512
PSU: Seasonic M12 600W
CPU cooler: Thermalright Extreme 120 (Can't get Noctuas here)
OS: Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit
Case: Antec 900.

btw, i live in singapore and can't get everything here.

and are X38 boards worth it?

Unless you're going Crossfire, I don't think the X38 is worth the extra money. I would go with the DS3R or even the DS3L if you're not planning to RAID. Speaking of which, have you already picked out hard drives and an optical drive?

The 8800GT is a good choice, though I'm not familiar with Xpertvision's products.

Otherwise, it looks pretty good.

Not going to go crossfire anytime soon what with my graphic card being a 8800GT.

For the hard drive, i was thinking Seagate 500GB with 5 yr warranty.

For optical drive, the Samsung SH-S203B

So if you're not doing crossfire and not doing RAID (assumed since you only have 1 HDD), I would go with the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L. Are there any other 8800GT's available in Singapore besides the Xpertvision? I would rather get eVGA, XFX, BFG Tech, or MSI's versions of the 8800GT since they seem more reputable to me.

I think i can get pretty much all brands of 8800GT. It's just the Xpertvision one is the cheapest and Xpertvision puts their own cooler on it which presumably is better than the stock cooler.

Does anyone know what kind of overclock i might get if i used Corsair XMS2 ram and the Hyper TX2 instead of what i have here?

Unless your game is FSX, the E8400 will be all you need without overclocking.

If you have any extra money to spend, spend it on the vga card for gaming. Look at a slight upgrade to the 8800GTS-512-G92. It is a bit faster, but the big thing to me is that it has an excellent stock dual slot cooler that sends the hot vga air out the back of the case instead of recirculating it.

All the rest looks great.

Hmm... I reckon the 8800GTS would be overkill but i'll give it some thought if there's space in my budget.

And can anyone recommend a good monitor for 1680*1050 resolutions?