Hi, building system for parents, just thought I better get a second opinion on these parts:
Maximum budget is about £550...

Asus P5K - £70
E8400 2x3Ghz -- £140
2GB DDR2-800 -- £30
512MB XFX GEFORCE 8600GT -- £53
OCZ 500W StealthXStream -- £39
250GB WD CAVIAR SE16 -- £37
DVD-RW -- £17
Centurion 534 -- £36
19" Monitor -- £130approx.

Total - £550.

Any incompatabilities or n00b errors etc?

Cheers.

If it's for gaming, you need more than 8600gt. It's not good enough for most recent games. You may also need more than 2gb of ram. But at that budget, it's hard to come by.

It's for my parent's, they just want a quick machine for £550, they won't be playing games on it. We can upgrade to 4gb+ later if need be. thanks for reply.

I have a question to you. it is not related to the original post. I have a q 6600 G0 with p 35 ds3L. I can not pass it over 3.1 ghz. it is rock stable at 3.1 but it fails after that point. at 3. 1, i set 1.375 in bios. btw, my vid is 1.325. I go all the way up to 1.430 v and i push chipsets to .03+ v but it never survives prime test. i can not try 8 multiplier because i am using 667 mgz ram. is it the ram that is holding me back? I have corsair 550 vx psu. I am happy with what i have , but i do not feel good when i see someone at 3.6. Please share your oc experience with me.

Have you tried pushing chipset voltage higher than that? P35 should oc reliably to 1600mhz, which is 3.6ghz for Q6600. You can change ram ratio to run it at 8x multiplier, but I doubt that'll help. Try underclock your ram, a lot, and loosen up timings. 1.325 is the highest possible vid for g0 q6600, so you've got bad luck there. But I have 1.3125 vid, only slightly lower, and got to 3.6ghz prime95 stable at 1.45vcore. For testing purposes, set vcore at 1.5v and see how that goes. 550watt psu should do fine, unless its defective. What about heat? How hot is it running?

The thing is : i can not push FSB that much as my ram is 667. My motherboard does not have option to go lower than 2 * for memory timing. As a result, the ram speed keeps going up with the FSB increase. during stress test at 3.1 ghz ( 1.325v) , it never goes over 70. Should i change my ram to 800 Mhz to push FSB? But, when i do stress test at 3.2 or 3.4, i only run for processor test to eliminate ram problem, but it fails anyway. So, i doubt it is related to RAm issues. Man... i have no clue.