Hi there. I'm building a new system and need some advise. The system will be going to university with me so the system will have to last at least around 2.5 years (if I take a year out and somehow find the money to build another system) or more realistically, until I end which will be around 4.5 years from now. I don't need the system to be maxed out now, as long as I can upgrade and improve on it when needed.

I would just go with Intel but I'm not sure, since the lifecycle of the 775 is coming to an end.

I was thinking something a long these lines:
1.
Q6600
Something like P5N-E, or a bit better.
Starting off with 2 gb, but eventually upgrading to 8gb of OCZ 800MHZ
8800GT from ebuyer, leaves an extra slot for SLI
And the NVIDIA stacker 830 with the 850w PSU

I liked the idea of the AMD Spider platform and I'd be happy to have a system that supports AM3, albeit with DDR2. However, for the price I was thinking the 8800GT (like £120 now) out performs the ATI comparisons for the 38xx (R670?). It would be cheaper to get 2 8800GT's than 4 3850's although I'm not sure, would getting 4 GPU's even be worth it? Are their any decent AM2+ boards that support SLI? I can't seem to find any. If I went for AMD I would imagine something like:
2.
Either some Phenom, or alternatively save some cash and buy an x2 64.
K9A2 platinum
Probably the same again for RAM
Possibly 1 R670(?), probably a 3580 for around £8x which would let me upgrade to more
Lexa case from ebuyer
1000W modular PSU from ebuyer
Since this setup should last longer, since it would be upgradable to AM3 I am considering getting water cooling for components, but that would increase cost. I'd lose quite a bit on graphics, I think.

What are peoples opinions? Could a 775 system last well enough?

Go with Q6600 and p35 motherboard if you want the best bang for the buck. Trade up to x38 motherboard if you want high overclocking.

8800gt or g92 8800gts is the most value for graphics card right now. But you should wait until the 9900 and 4xxx's cards to come out. They should perform much better, and will likely force price cuts of the older cards. That way, no matter what you get, you win.

Start with 4gb of ddr2 800, not 2. It's dirt cheap anyway. And for heavy gaming, you'll more than 2gb. 850 watt psu is overkill, but a sensible one. 1000watt is senseless. Your rig will do fine with a 700watt psu, even if you eventually decide to go sli or crossfire.

At this point you should consider which companies' hype you choose to believe. It has been pretty well confirmed that Intel's Nehalem processor will require a completely new platform, so you are correct in saying that the 775 socket is coming to an end. The question however is when. Intel has been saying that the first Nehalem processors will be released later this year, but there have been rumors that only the super high end desktop processor will be released this year and that mainstream processors that the normal enthusiast can actually afford may be 1 or even two years away. Conceivably, even though the 775 platform may be dying it may have some life left in it for a while longer. I'm not sure whther you will see many new processors for it other than what has already been released however.

On the AMD side there have been rumors that the 45nm Phenoms will be available in stock clock speeds as high as 3.2GHz, which would make them competitive with the currently available Intel quad cores at stock speeds. This however has not been confirmed and nothing is known yet about the overclocking capability of the 45nm phenoms. We will probably know in another month or so as AMD is said to be currently sampling the 45nm chips and plans to start production this summer.

For graphics you really can't go wrong with either an 8800-series Nvidia card or a 38xx ATI card. As dagger mentioned, the next generation graphics cards for both companies are due to be launched in another month so that would be a great time to get a good bargain on a previous generation card. I'd pick whichever card you can get the best deal on.

What is your budget for this build? Do have an OS for this build? What parts don't you need?

Thanks for your input Just_An_Engineer. In the short term Intel is substantially better, but considering my computer will have to last a long while and I'll probably want to upgrade my processor at least once later on (like 2 or 3 years) I'm leaning with going with AM2+ 790FX, since I won't have the cash to buy a new motherboard too.

Yeah good points dagger. I was originally going with 800W, but then a 900W came for the same price. I then checked yesterday and 1000W was available for the same price. That being said, I'll check over before I buy. Their are decent 700W available for £40 so that would save some cash.

Lunyone, if I was to buy my graphics card later I guess I could spend £500 on my system. I could use my X600, for now and wait till the prices go down, I have a sata 7.2k RPM 180GB drive and could install Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit. If I was going to keep my system for a long time and switch CPU's too, I wouldn't mind getting a water cooling system. If their was a decent case with a nice side window and a decent psu that could save me some cash, that would definitely be something I'd want.

Considering the fact that I will want to buy a new processor in around 2 possibly 3 years, If I went with AMD my system would probably be this:
MSI K9A2 Platinum 790FX Socket AM2+: £100
NZXT LEXA BlackLine: £70
Hi-Power Black 1000W Modular 13.5cm Fan PSU: £70 (or something between £40 - £70)
OCZ 4GB Kit (2x2GB) 800MHz/PC2-6400 Memory Platinum Performance CL5 (5-4-4-18): £64
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (3GHz) Socket AM2 L2 2MB (2 x 1MB) Cache OEM Processor: £78
Some water cooling kit, probably Thermaltake BigWater 760i Water Cooling Liquid CL-W0121: £100

That would come to around £482. I sold my Xbox 360 stuff for around £380 and got £100 bonus from work, so that would cover everything. Buy a gfx card when the 4xxx series comes out I guess. Any one got any advise? Is £140 on case + PSU reasonable for a £500 setup?

Sorry to double post but it won't let me edit!

Also I'm not sure between the MSI 790 or the DFI version. DFI is supposed to be good for overclocking, which is what I'd want to do if I bought water cooling solution although I'm not sure about MSI. DFI is usually around £140 most sites, but it's £91 at scan.co.uk. DFI has 3 GFX ports, MSI 4. Is quadfire actually worth it? I've seen the ratings of the 3850 and I don't think I'd buy four of them plus I think it's just under 3x the performance with four? Does anybody know which one will be best for my situation? I'm not sure buying 4, or even 3 graphics cards would be worth it.

I've heard mostly positive things about the MSI board. I haven't heard much of anything about the DFI board, but DFI generally makes very good boards.

In my opinion the 4 PCI-X slots is a waste. I can't imagine a scenario where I would be willing to spend enough money to buy 4 graphics cards and a power supply big enough to handle that kind of load. Almost every game can be played at high settings with a single high end card so having any more than 2 cards is probably massive overkill. I would gladly trade one of those x16 slots for an x1 slot that I could put another device in.

You may want to wait for another 2 weeks for the new boards to come out with the SB750 southbridge paired with the 790FX northbridge. The SB750 has better connectivity that the older SB600 on the current motherboards and there have been rumors that it will allow more overclocking ability on the Phenom chips. (Disclaimer: I read the bit about increased overclocking abilities on fudzilla so it may be BS)

You mean pci-e, pci-x is something different. But yeah, 4 pcie is a
waste. Sli/crossfire is never best bang for the buck to begin with. The
graphics market moves way too fast for that. They're for people who
spend a fortune to be on the bleeding edge.

You might consider x38/48 with crossfire. X38/48 perform far above the
best Nvidia chipset out in term of fsb overclocking, and the new
hd4000s card might give 9900 a run. Wait and see if it's any good
before deciding on motherboard.

Ah okay. Thanks for your insight. I'd consider an SLI AM2+ motherboard, but I can't seem to find many of them to even compare or consider. I can find a few, most around £140-£180 although not in stock. The only one I can find is the AsRock one from here: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Pro [...] &OrderBy=1

Although it's just for considering, I'm not sure even considering such a board is a good idea. If it was say £100 from MSI, DFI, Asus, ECS or something maybe but it's a bit of a budget board. Shame really. I guess holding off for now will be beneficial. Hope ebuyer get some more of the cases I want back in, only 2 and 1 left for setup 1 and 2 respectively

Asus and Gigabyte have just released motherboards based on the 780a chipset but using nforce so capable of sli, which would probably be a good option for the amd route, perhaps more future compatible than intel but taking a gamble on the 45nm phenoms being a lot better.

Hmm seems the gigabyte one is an matx form one for media center machines, only has 2 ram slots.

Yeah I was looking at the ASUS Crosshair II although it is rather expensive. I have a budget build arriving with some crappy Asus Sli motherboard that only support 2000 rather than 5200 but I got it as part of a cheap build so I'm either going to use it until the prices come down or build another PC with it.

I'm actually going with a 6000 x2 with 4GB ram and an 8800GTS so it should be good to run the games I want like UT3 with good FPS. The reason for me wanting a good AM2+ motherboard is not for the new Phenom releases coming up but since I'm going to be at uni for hopefully four years, the computer will have to be upgradable throughout that time which means whilst socket 775 is dead I might upgrade to an AM3 in an AM2+ board with DDR2 ram, saving me cash whilst giving me some extra performance. I think if I run with a rubbish board today then it's only going to be rubbish tomorrow too. Crosshair II looks ideal but @ scan it's £185.