Check my spec for £1.2k quiet gaming rig...

[VenomByte]

Okay, time for an overhaul. My old comp (XP2600+, 512MB DDR, geforce 6800) has been great for the last couple years with the occasional gfx card upgrade, but is now starting to struggle a bit with newer games. I'm taking the opportunity to build a new system from scratch.

The budget is around £1.2k, but that's not set in stone - I'll happily got to £1500 or so if it's worth it.

The goal is a new system (minus the keyboard, mouse, monitors, and optical drive, which I will keep from the old system) which will be a seriously powerful gaming rig which is also very quiet.


Here are the bits I've come up with so far:

Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-044-CO) 1
£194.95 £194.95
Asus A8N-SLi Premium nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-111-AS) 1
£104.95 £104.95
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA4400CDBOX) (CP-127-AM) 1
£284.95 £284.95
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC3200 Dual Channel Platinum Series EL-DDR CAS2 (OCZ4002048ELDCPE-K) (MY-057-OC) 1
£139.95 £139.95
Samsung SpinPoint P SP2504C 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-018-SA) 2
£54.95 £109.90
Enermax Noisetaker 600W EG701AX-VE(W) SFMA ATX2.0 SLI Compliant PSU (CA-021-EN) 1
£78.95 £78.95
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 4 7.1 EAX Sound Card - OEM (SC-037-CL) 1
£29.95 £29.95
Altec Lansing 5100 Enhanced 5.1 Speaker System (SP-000-AL) 1
£49.95 £49.95
AR Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR) 1
£14.50 £14.50
Subtotal £1,008.05
VAT £176.41
Total £1,184.46

(The case I'm buying elsewhere for around £60, which is not included in the spec)

Any thoughts? Any important bits I've missed?

I'm not sure if it makes any difference whether I go for the A8N Sli premium or deluxe.
I'm also tempted to replace 1x spinpoint with a 74GB raptor in a silentmaxx enclosure, but I'm not sure exactly how quiet this will be and I'm wondering if it might get a bit hot?

I'll probably make my decision and place the final order at the weekend.

 

[VenomByte]

Some interesting feedback here so far, thanks for that. May be worth while waiting, but there is *always* something better just around the corner.

In this case I'm not convinced it's worth waiting for Socket M2 since they'll be very high priced to start with, and it's also likely to be a few months before the motherboards catch up with it. Not to mention that I'm not really convinced DDR2 is going to be much of a serious benefit.

Will probably wait to see the 7900 benches now though. It's never easy to choose the right graphics option... particularly as I'm not convinced SLI or crossfire are good value for money. Sure, performance will be blistering, but one top end gfx card on a good rig is more than enough to run everything at top settings. I'd sooner save the spare cash and put it towards upgrading the graphics card at a later date when there are better ones available, rather than suddenly find myself with two rapidly ageing cards.

FYI, my main monitor runs at 1280x1024 on a 19" TFT.

Chances are whatever I buy will be expected to last 2-3 years (as with the last rig) with minimal changes in that time, besides new graphics cards. After that I'll likely buy a whole new system again in any case... so I'm not overly worried about needing to be able to upgrade the processor.

Lots for me to think about...