Another PC build, thoughts please!

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I am currently in the process of finally moving from a 32-bit platform to 64-bit. I've been waiting a long time and after much research and review reading, this is the rig I will be buying in a month's time...

AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core 6000+
Asus Arctic Square (Socket 754/775/939/AM2) CPU Cooler
Asus M2N-SLi Deluxe
Crucial Ballistix 2GB DDR2 PC2-6400
Sapphire ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB GDDR3 (PCI-E)
Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 160GB
Samsung 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer Serial ATA ReWriter (Black)
Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio 7.1 Soundcard (PCI)
Enermax Noisetaker 535W EG565AX-VE(W) SFMA ATX2.0 SLI Compliant PSU

You'll notice no case is listed, well, I currently use a Coolermaster Centurion 530 (I think, the ones that come with either silver or blue fittings) which is in good condition and I've hit my budget so that'll have to wait for another time.

I'm an AMD/ATI fan, so those choices will definitely stick, but if any of the experts out there have any comments with regards to my choices, possibility of incompatibility errors (not the buses, I mean just common issues other consumers may have faced with similar choices to mine) and so forth, then please fire away.

My budget is at maximum, £550, so if anyone can recommend anything cheaper and better (no value **** for me, lol) then I'd be really appreciative.

Thanks very much everyone!

P.S. I sure hope this rig will cope with Crysis!

No swearing please!

Zefan.
 
I have no immediate plans to. I used to be addicted to gaming (BF2, Doom 3, etc) and wanted to but never really had the guts to do it as I wasn't very well educated in that area, plus I was poor so if I made a fatal mistake, no more gaming for the forseeable future!

Is this rig quite overclockable then? I've heard Crucial Ballistix is quite overclockable and also heard of a few people getting an extra 300-400mhz out of the AMD AM2 X2 6000.

Thoughts on the rig, good, bad?
 
i'd look at changing the enermax for the corsair 520w.

sound card go for the xtreme music.

yeah most people seem to prefer the ballistix 5300 over the 6400 as its been known to clock to 8500 speeds.

cpu cooler wise check out the Noctua NH-U12F lot of people saying it does a very good job.

would seriously consider looking at the core2duo processors.
 
Here:

Intel Core 2 Duo E2160 "LGA775 Conroe" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail
Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler (Socket 478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA775)
Gigabyte GA_P35C_DS3R (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 & DDR3 Motherboard
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-5300C3 667MHz Dual Channel Kit
Sapphire ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music 7.1 Soundcard - OEM
Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB 3200AAKS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM
Samsung SH-183LBEBN 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer Serial ATA Lightscribe ReWriter (Black) - OEM
Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU

Total : £535.64

Overclock it to 2.4GHZ and it wil be as fast as that AMD 6000+.

Overclock it to 3GHZ and it will beat the AMD 6000 into the ground.

So just to clarify, Overclock the NUTS of it.
 
Haha, wow, are these Core2Duos' seriously that overclockable? How much strain would it be under? What about heat issues?

On tomshardware.co.uk, there are about 6 models of the Core2Duos that beat the AMD 6000+ everytime, I guess I'm just frightened of change then!

If you reckon that'll eat up current and new games and spit them back out, then I reckon I might try Intel for a change!

Everything else looks good though right, a decent rig?
 
How well do you think this rig will handle current games (Battlefield 2142, Prey, Crysis (when it comes out), etc)?

I'm used to having rigs which ALMOST satisfy me (i.e. a bit of juddering here and there) so I'm really looking to make sure I cream my pants every time I load a game up, lol!
 
Okay, cool.

With regards to the Gigabyte motherboard mentioned above, what does it have over equally priced Asus/Abit motherboards? It's certainly not as flash looking (even though that's really not an issue!).
 
the gigabyte is one of the most regular recommended/used boards so theres already a good idea of what it can do, and not many "issues" that havent been encountered already if you get a problem.
 
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