Recomended PSU and GPU

That PSU is fine, and if you plan on doing any gaming on that rig I would recommend no less than a Nvidia GTX 560Ti to go with it.

One thing though windows 7 is a space hog and on top of that once you get all your programs installed you are looking at 50-75GB worth of space being used even if you dont instal them on that drive because it needs space for the registry, drivers, etc etc, plus on top of that some programs and add-ons dont give you the option of choosing the destination directory, so i wouldnt recommend using such a small drive, and no matter what anyone says you will run out of space before you know what hit you.
I recommend you run 2x1 TB drives in Raid-0 configuration since you are looking for speed.

The GTX 560 ti is a solid choice, but you can also look at the AMD 6950 if it fits your budget. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1gb-gigabyte-hd-6950-oc-...(x16)-5000mhz-gddr5-gpu-870mhz-1408cores-2x-dvi-dp-hdmi

The PSU is solid for a single GPU system.

I'd look at a mininum SSD of 64 GB; it kills a raided mechanical drive (HDD) for speed.

This is a bold faced lie, so long as you manage your files well you don't have need for anything above a 250 Gb HDD, even for games.

I've been running on a 120Gb SSD and I can say you'll have no issues with 500 GB unless you're planning on storing a whole lot of uncompressed video on your pc.

The windows 7 install is about 15 Gb, even with "add ons and registry, drivers etc." this won't top 20gb, I can guarantee it. Unless you start downloading every language pack that comes with windows 7 ultimate (which run around 600 mb each) you will never find windows alone being larger than 20 Gb.

unless you're using it to store a library of hundreds of games that you never plan to remove on the off chance you might want to play Kane and Lynch a second time in like a year, or you're running a media pc, no home user will "need" 2 Tb drives. Just back up or manage your files well and you'll be well within the comfort zone of 500 gb.

That said, if you feel you need the extra space, for whatever reason, terabyte drives are only about 80 bucks or so each, only about 20-30 bucks more than a standard 500 gb drive, so if you really feel the need, go ahead.

Awesome thanks, the two drives would be much cheaper that using a solid state drive aswell, would these be 6gbs drives?
I was thinking of a HD 6870, i'll only be using one screen and i'm happy with less than top spec in game so long as it doesnt look like rubbish.

Even in RAID 0 no 2 hard drives would approach the theoretical ceiling of 6gbps, you could safely go with drives of the old 3gbps standard and it wouldn't make a lick of difference.

Also i'd reccomend you take a second look at SSD for boot drive. It would be certainly more reliable than 2 hard drives in RAID 0 (twice the chance of failure because if one goes, the array is unrecoverable.) and you would have better speed with it as well.

For about 100 bucks more i'd go with the 120gb Agility 3. I picked one up a while back and was blown away by the performance. It is of the 6gbps standard, although even these drives do not approach that level of performance, they will outperform and theoretically outlast a hard drive, plus are resistant to physical bumps and bruises, use less electricity, have a smaller footprint in the case, helping airflow (as most are 2.5 inch laptop sized drives as opposed to 3.5 inch mechanical drives) and generate less heat.

Of course the trade off is a little more cash and a lot less room, but if you're using it just for a boot drive you'll have no worries, and you'll see a huge increase in performance of the system (I didn't really believe the hype, but hard drives are Definetely the bottleneck in today's systems. I was up and running from blank drive to windows 7 with drivers running steam in less than an hour, and i'm still surprised how fast it boots once you get past POST.)

Edit: if you can get your hands on an OLD STYLE (new ones are much harder to tweak) 6950 you can get it up to about the same level of performance as a 6970 by tweaking the shaders, past that i'd still reccomend a 6950 over a 6870. You get a lot more card for, depending on which brand you get, around 40 or so more dollars.

Dude you are awefully abrasive, I have personally filled up 100GB of my OS drive and have had to redo my partitions to increase the capacity, next time think before you speak dont just go off on someone and call them a liar you jerk.

I'm just saying that nobody that properly manages their files (IE, back up large files to a second drive, or discs, deletes games/programs that they do not plan to use regularly and keeps pictures/music archived on a separate drive or discs) should never come close to the limit of any standard hard drive that is on the market right now.

I'm running a gaming machine solely off a 120 gb SSD, I have several games installed on it, and all the programs I regularly use and i think i'm right around the 60 Gb mark. So long as you properly manage your files you will have no issues with drive space.


If you never uninstall a program or game that you have no forseeable use for in the future, don't have a second drive that you move pictures/music on to or decide you want to pirate every season of LOST in HD and stick it on your boot drive, then yeah, you'll fill any drive up pretty damn fast.

The only people that will find themselves wanting the space of even a 500 gb hard drive are people that don't plan to regularly maintenance their pc, or those who are running some sort of home backup on it.

I've seen plenty of people who don't use more than 50 Gb of their 500 Gb hdd for regular daily use, even running a modern OS, Even less so running XP. Hell that's why Acer laptops would come pre-partitioned with 2 40 Gb partitions on a 80 Gb drive less than 5 years ago.

Just because some people don't properly manage their files and keep their OS tidy doesn't mean nobody can.