Building PC for the first time!

[Yixian]

Hey guys, I'm building my first ever PC. I am a Mac user with a MBP but the graphics capabilities of Macs don't meet my needs so I'm selling the PS3 I rarely use and setting a budget of about £400 for a gaming PC which I'll put together myself for xmas.

I want to play Crysis, no AA or AF, on very high at 1280 or 1440x, and I want to play Far Cry 2, Fallout 3, Dead Space, Left 4 Dead etc. maxed out at 1440x. I'd also like a machine that will be able to run future games like Diablo 3 and Alan Wake smoothly.

Here is my planned build, let me know what you think and if it will meet my requirements:

Bare in mind I am planning on overclocking the E5200 to ~3ghz and overclocking the 4850 wherever possible too.

 

[hairycat101]

E8400 or better for the CPU. Also far cry 2 is supposed to be able to use quad cores. If that is true then for future combatability you might consider a quad. q6600? Whatever CPU you get, try to clock it up to ~ 3.0 or better.

PSU might not be enough. Probably will be, but keep it in mind if the build starts out problematic.

I like the coolermaster cases BTW. Easy setup and good quality.

 

[Yixian]

My budget is £400 so I can't accord anything like a quad core Will a 5200 OCd to 3ghz still bottleneck the 4850?

I'm also wondering what kind of performance increase I'd see in games at 1440x resolution by going for a 4870 over a 4850..

 

[geofelt]

SATA version of the dvd drive is better than the IDE.
It won't cost any more.
Much easier cabling.

 

[Yixian]

Okey doke, done and done Thanks for the heads up!

 

[aeiouandxyz]

I'm also wondering what kind of performance increase I'd see in games at 1440x resolution by going for a 4870 over a 4850..

Almost none because the 4870 will be overkill for 1440x resolution. Stick with the 4850 at that resolution.
You should get a PSU with at least 550W just in case. The 460W may not be able to support your GPU and OC to the CPU very well.

 

[Yixian]

Ok thanks Also, does anyone know why there is an exclamation mark beside my choice of wifi card?

 

[Yixian]

Behold, the final build, unless anyone can see anything wrong with this one, I'll buy it tomorrow!