Antec P182 Gun Metal Black Case
Corsair 620W HX Series Modular SLi Powersupply, ATX, EPS 12V, whisper quiet, 5 year warranty
Abit IX38 QuadGT Socket 775 or Asus P5K Premium or Asus Maximus or DFI LanParty LT X48-T2R or Abit IX38
Intel Core 2 Quad-Core Q6600, S775, 2.40 GHz or possibly Q9450 depending on budget
Scythe Ninja Plus Fanless HeatPipe Cooler or Tuniq Tower 2
Corsair 4GB Kit (2 x 2GB) PC2-6400 800MHZ DDR2 Memory
Seagate 400GB 7200RPM 16MB SATA 2 Hard Disk Drive
Samsung 20x SATA Lightscribe DVDRW Dual Layer Black
9800 GTX or BFG 8800GTS OC 512MB
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Edition DVD

Buying from YoYoTech (would like them to build, I am not confident at building hi-spec machines, prefer to play around with cheaper bits). Price is <900 including VAT.

Anyhow, dont want lecture on how I should build this myself. What I do want is advice on my components choice.
I know very little about hardware so please bare with me. Ive posted similar threads in other forums and its very hard to come to a set spec to buy - everyone has different opinions on what to get.

Using it for work (GIS, similar to 3D CAD), gaming (not crazy serious, but fairly), and some photoshop/illustrator/video editing work. Will end up making it dual or triple boot with XP32, Vista64 and Ubuntu.

Apparently the onboard 7.1 sound is nearly as good as x-fi, also I have a Audigy 2ZS plat pro soundblaster card, so dont need sound-card.
I also have a 750GB SATA that ill plop in there when it arrives.

So - what changes would you make and why? Im after value and performance (do they go together?)

Thanks in advance.

Would like to order this, this week. Any remarks on the kit?

Are you going Nelahem soon? If so, go with P35. Otherwise, pick up X38. ABIT is pretty decent.

Tuniq hands down the better cooler. Or if it'll be back in stock:

Noctua NH-U12F

I never heard of Nelahem until you mentioned it. I am not very up to date with hardware. Which mobo would u recommend for future-proofing?

Thanks for advice on cooler.

Ok, so you're buying a mobo that lasts a few years? You should look at X38 or X48 if money is no object. They're basically the same except X48 is probably the best s775 overclocker for a premium.

My bad. Typo. It's Nehalem. Google it. There are alrealy pictures of the waffers (materials of the cpus) & previews.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehal [...] tecture%29

so should I wait for these Nehalem processors to hit the market? Im in no immediate rush.

Problem is Nehalem won't be out til late this year or early next year. If you have a P4 or A64X2, you should be able to wait til then. Another problem is nobody knows how Nehalem stacks up to Core 2. It may be worse at a higher price. The initial report is each of the 8 cores run at 3.2ghz. So yeah, it'll be faster, but at what price - that's the question. We have to determine whether it's worth the money. I have the option to pick up a Yorkie for cheap if Nehalem is a let-down.