Right my lovely student loan has come through, and have somewhere in the region of £1000 to play with for a new PC.
This is what i have so far:

AMD Opteron UP 144 San Diego 1.8GHz 1MB Cache (Socket 939) - Retail
£99.95 £99.95
Crucial 2GB (2x1GB) DDR PC4000 Ballistix Dual Channel Kit (BL2KIT12864Z503)
£164.95 £164.95
CoolerMaster Stacker STC-810 - Silver Trim (No PSU)
£89.30 £89.30
Leadtek GeForce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
£179.95 £179.95
Western Digital Raptor 74GB WD740GD 10,000RPM SATA 8MB Cache - OEM
£99.95 £99.95
HD-048-WD Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 200GB 2000JS SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-048-WD)
£56.95 £56.95
Pioneer DVR-110DBK 16 x 16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter - (Black) OEM
£24.50 £24.50



Subtotal £715.55
VAT £125.23
Total £840.78

What are your thoughts on that?

I have a 425W PSU, do u think it will be enough?
What motherboard should i get?
What CPU cooler should i get? (For overclocking)

If you go Opteron, you overclock those by changing the mulitplier so do NOT need to FSB overclock. Therefore normal 3200 ram might be fine and much cheaper. It's your choice though.

Deffo get a board that can do SLI, gives you a nice upgrade option. But the DFI lan party boards always get good reviews, I'd look at one of those. Other than that, I do like ASUS boards.

Meh might as well get the best, I've heard good things about it

Umm, what about 425w situation, and a very decent cooler?

just buy a Retail CPU, that will give you a pretty good cooler.

I dont know that much about PSUs but some say SLi ready. also does the cpu have Sata power conectors? my Sata drives have both conectors (standard and Sata) but i dont know thats the case with all drives

as for mobo, make sure its got SATA-II and dont cheep out with a system like that it would be a crime

nice to see you loan is going on inportant things, and not just junk like food/books

SATA-II is apparently still buggy and shit, Considering that a new 10,000 RPM 150gb Raptor will not saturate a SATA-1 bus, it's irrelevant right now.

if u are thinking u might go sli, then you will need at least a 550watt psu.

Not for now. He can add a better PSU if he adds a second card.

Quote: Mani
just buy a Retail CPU, that will give you a pretty good cooler.

I cant use retail cooling if im overclocking though?

only cerain 144 proc steppings overclock well, it's very hard to get them retail unfortunatly. to hit 3gig it needs to be the order of overclocking is as follows

CABNE>CABYE>CABGE

and from what i have read it is the FSB u increase to get the top overclocks so decent ram is important.

mobo

Asus A8N-SLi SE nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-101-AS)

??

id get the 146 opteron over the 144... its about 30£ diffrence and a fair bit more room to play

yeah i might tbh

Right here is what im getting, after lots of advice im getting...

GX-069-LT Leadtek GeForce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-069-LT)
£179.95 £179.95
HD-015-WD Western Digital Raptor 74GB WD740GD 10,000RPM SATA 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-015-WD)
£99.95 £99.95
CD-031-PO Pioneer DVR-110DBK 16 x 16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter - (Black) OEM (CD-031-PO)
£24.50 £24.50
MB-013-DF DFI LanParty UT NF4 SLI-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-013-DF)
£99.95 £99.95
MY-000-MK Mushkin 2GB DDR XP4000 Extreme Performance Dual Channel Kit (2x1GB) CAS3 (991483) (MY-000-MK)
£164.95 £164.95
CA-039-AN Antec P180 Advanced Super Midi Tower Case - No PSU (Silver) (CA-039-AN)
£74.95 £74.95
FG-000-AR Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR)
£14.95 £14.95
CA-002-SS Seasonic S12 600W Silent ATX2.0 Power Supply (CA-002-SS)
£79.95 £79.95
Subtotal £739.15
VAT £129.36
Total £868.51

you forgot your Opteron 144 processor m8

no i havent, its in the post to me already

That all looks top the dog's nuts Dude if you get a decent overclock there will not be much you won't be able to play at a decent frame rate with mucho eye candy. I had quite a well specked system before I went A64 + 2 Gig of fast Ram . I found that the new platform would play FEAR , BF2 at levels I could never have reached on the old rig & that was using the same 6800 Ultra . The platform so makes a difference especially the Ram , man I can tab out of BF2 look something up or adjust something & tab back in a heartbeat & I am on the server before most what the map changes .