ultima series and desktop advice..

hey all, very new to these forums but have been recommended by friends to come check it out. i am a keen gamer, and in the market for a desktop pc to satisfy my needs. unfortunately i have almost non-existent knowledge of computer hardware and certainly not enough to be going building my own. so hoping to pick the brains of the wealth of knowledge here!

the series i am interested in is the ultima series, of which i have read many good reviews. my budget is in the region of £1500 so the two models which fit that are these:

- http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-101-OE

- http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-132-OE

i would imagine it is important to point out that i'm not looking for a super-powerful rig, i just want a dektop that gives a good solid performance and is capable of playing the majority of the latest games on highest settings. if it helps, the main games i am interested in are star wars: the old republic, guild wars 2, civilisation 5 and of course starcraft 2!

so my questions are basic enough. first off, is there anyone here who have purchased either of these models here and if so how would you rate your purchase? how would these models compare to each other; the specs appear the same apart from one which has 'sli option system' - what is this? would you say both models are capable of running these games on the highest settings? also, what is meant by a solid state hard drive upgrade? and finally, given my budget i would be thinking about going for the most expensive of the graphics car options. this would mean either the - sapphire ati radeon hd 5870 1024mb gddr5 OR - ocuk value geforce gtx 480 1536mb gddr5. how would you compare these two?

so i'm sorry about the wall of text and all the waffle. however any and all help is greatly appreciated!

Hi

Havent purchased either of these, but from reports of people who have , as with all OcUK systems, they're very good

SLI option is adding dual gfx cards, gives you more graphics power but tbh its unneccessary in most circumstances, including yours, unless youre gaming across 3 monitors at a v high resolution

Both of those models are capable of running those games on highest settings yes, especially with either of those gfx options, another system you could choose is the Titan Exodus, if the machine is just for gaming this will perform just as well, as i7 is overkill for gaming really

a Solid State Drive, or SSD, is basically just a really really fast hard drive, it will make windows and your games/apps load a lot quicker, it wont overly effect your actual gaming experience as such, but will make machine generally quicker

Both the 5870 and 480 are very good, theres a comparison of the two here

thanks mate, that was an extremely helpful response. you couldn't have really answered my questions any more clearly and now i feel easily confident enough to push ahead with the purchase.

Don't forget an OS!