I'm looking for some help and advice with regards to building a new system on budget. As it stands, I can afford between £400 and £500 to spend on a new rig. What I've got so far seems ok with me, but any help with lowering the price or finding better price/performance parts is appreciated

I'm building it for gaming at 1280x1024 resolution, obviously aiming to achieve smooth frame rates on medium to high settings in games such as Bioshock and Age of Conan. Ie, DX 10 gaming. I can't afford a bigger monitor at the moment, so considering any resolutions higher than that is pointless. But I would like to have a system that'll play these games with good settings, and hopefully last a few years.

I also do a lot of work on my PC, so it's not just for gaming. This work includes programming, often on virtual machines, sometimes more than one at once.

I'm aiming to OC to around 3GHz, which is the main reason I chose the Processor and the mobo. I want to go Vista 64 bit. Partly because it's the future, 64bit will become far more mainstream soon. The extra RAM capabilities are nice too.

Here's my proposed build. Any thoughts, advice, criticism is welcomed. Any help on lowering the price with cheaper parts with similar/same performance, or finding a better site to order from, would be great.

Antec Sonata III Piano Black Quiet Mid Tower Case - With 500W EarthWatts PSU
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/1280 [...] ct_reviews
£72.04

Samsung 500GB SATAII Hard Drive
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/1304 [...] t_overview
£51.99

Intel E2160
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/127248
£41.49

XFX 9600GT 512MB
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142637
£107.95

Corsair 4GB Kit (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/1304 [...] t_overview
£61.69

Arctic Cooling AC-FRZ-7P Freezer 7
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/1059 [...] ct_reviews
£15.54

MSI P35 Neo2-FR iP35
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/1402 [...] ct_reviews
£67.99

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/123067
£58.79

Looks ok to me.

It looks ok, but with all the stuff you may want to run for work, you might want to try to squeeze in a faster CPU, maybe even a quad. I suppose it may be relative to whatever you're running now too.

If you're are considering overclocking, I would go for the 2180 CPU. A tad more expensive but you get a better chance of getting a good OC'er chip. In any case the rest looks fine.

I guess for a few extra quid it might be worth it. From the guide on Toms they went for the cheapest one and got similar results across the board, but if I could push one a few MHz higher then it'd be worth it, or just have it more stable/cooler might work out better.

With regards to going quad, I'd love to. But the cheapest one around is the Q6600, for around £140. Way out of my price range at the moment. Something I could certainly save up for though.

Thanks for the quick feedback

Looks good to me . If possible consider a P35-DS3x or P5K-x for best OCing.

What I liked about the MSI P35 was the heatsinks on the mobo to keep it cool, and the onboard RAID controller, for when I can afford a second HD.


Would you recommend something like:
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/136365/

Very similar in price and spec to the MSI P35 I had chosen, I've heard they're both good OC'ers. What would you recommend?

I would get the Gigabyte. Also as fatcat said, a e2180 would be better to.

Ok, I'll get looking at some reviews on the Gigabyte and consider the E2180. Price wise it's only a small increase, so that's fine with me

Cheers for the help everyone

DS3R is good and either the e2160 or e2180. The e2180 might a bit easier to OC, but I haven't OC'd either, so I'm just going by what I've read.