£400-£500 gaming/work rig would love some help

oh and by the way the list i've made is worth: 309.57, but i still need to sort out a case, graphics card and if theres any changes to be made

I don't know the first thing about AMD, so I'll leave that to another.

GPU: ATI 5750/5770

PSU: Should be fine unless you plan on sli/crossfire

HDD: Look at the Samsung Spinpoint F3 1tb, or Seagate 7200.12 1tb, much better access speeds price should be similiar.

RAM: Dominators tend to be overpriced and you'll never see the performance increase. G.Skill is recommended.

Case: Antec 300 is a great budget case.

If you read the OP in this thread: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/261222-13-build-adv... then you should be able to give us all the info we need to be able to offer proper advice about your build.

Firstly it would make sense to spend £4 more to get one of the best drives around: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB £68.

I think you should get a SATA DVD drive instead of that IDE one.

The wattage needed depends on the video card. I think 400W is too low and I would get this instead: OCZ 500W StealthXStream 80plus £48

And this case: Antec 300 £43

Which should give you enough to get this: ATI Radeon 5770 £136
If you buy a SATA burner that is around £20, then I make the build at £511

You could spend less on RAM to get you closer to £500; you could drop down to 1333Mhz RAM for example. Or look at a different online retailer, as scan's selection isn't very good and quite expensive. Also wait for one of the 5770s that is around £120 to come into stock.

heres my entry put the right way. thanks for the link Silvune. Also I added what you guys have suggested.


APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: Before the beginning of February BUDGET RANGE: 400-500 including taxes

SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: Gaming (around crysis level of graphics), Photoshop, Dreamweaver, web browsing.

PARTS NOT REQUIRED: keyboard, mouse, monitor(haven't bought one yet), speakers, OS

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: No preference. COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: UK, Belfast.

PARTS PREFERENCES: None, but i would like to go down the AMD route for it being cheaper

OVERCLOCKING:Maybe. SLI OR CROSSFIRE: Maybe.

MONITOR RESOLUTION: Not sure

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: In the summer I will try and get another monitor for dual monitor work.

CASE:
Antec 300 £43

MOBO:
MSI 770-C45, £49.15 Is this ok or is there a better one available


CPU:
AMD Athlon II X2 240 £45.70 would this be able to keep up with what i want to be able to do?


RAM:
Corsair Dominator DDR3, PC3-12800 (4GB) £96.33



GPU:ATI Radeon 5770 £136

PSU
OCZ 500W StealthXStream 80 plus £48

DRIVE:
Samsung SH-S182D £16.46

HDD:
Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB £68

Total:£502.64

With this build you would be able to put in a better processor quite easily at some point, probably the same with the 5770. Depends how high you want to get framerates in crysis and what settings you will want/can put up with. These two benchmarks show what can be achieved:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-5770-review-tes...
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3658&p=5
Depending on the resolution of the monitor you get, you can play in gamer mode and probably have either low or no anti-aliasing to get reasonable fps.
You aren't very likely to get a much better board and still be in budget. Read this review, it should help you get familiar with it before buying it: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2009/09/1...