Few questions..

[IwantanewPC]

How much should I be expecting to pay for a PC that will handle all the latest games on the highest settings, and games to come out in the near future? I wouldn't need a monitor, keyboard, mouse or speakers.

Also, do USB headphones affect game performance at all? Even if it's only a little bit?

And finally, would a game's performance (Frames per second wise) be better with onboard sound or a good sound card?

Thanks.

 

[mishima]

I would expect about £700-900. I paid that much for my current system a month ago. 8800's are coming down a little in price too.

You would benefit more from a soundcard but, it depends on whether you have a good speaker system and really how big the room is to take avantage of HD, surround etc.

EDIT:

It all depends whether you are prepared to overclock, obviously if you were going to you could spend less money and get an increase in performance. But I would say around the £800 mark.

 

[semi-pro waster]

Something like this ought to just about do it, you should be able to overclock nicely. The Lian-Li PC7+ in silver is just there as a placeweight since the black one is out of stock.

USB headphones, doubtful to make much of a difference particularly not on a high performance system like most now.

A soundcard makes very little difference in performance terms and unless you have a good speaker system it doesn't make a huge deal of difference for sound quality either.

Intel Core 2 DUO E4300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail £95.99
(£112.79) £95.99
(£112.79)
Pioneer DVR-111BK 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter - (Black) OEM £18.99
(£22.31) £18.99
(£22.31)
Samsung SpinPoint P SP2504C 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM £42.99
(£50.51) £42.99
(£50.51)
BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC 640MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £224.99
(£264.36) £224.99
(£264.36)
Asus P5N-E SLi nForce 650 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £69.99
(£82.24) £69.99
(£82.24)
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) £124.99
(£146.86) £124.99
(£146.86)
Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS Aluminium Midi-Tower Case - Silver £47.99
(£56.39) £47.99
(£56.39)
Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-520HXUK) £61.99
(£72.84) £61.99
(£72.84)
Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler £29.99
(£35.24) £29.99
(£35.24)
Sub Total : £717.91
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £12.95
Vat : £127.90
Total : £858.76

 

[melbourne720]

Above is a perfect build.