Spec Check

[yongja]

Thinking about buying this rig....

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music - OEM £43.50 (£51.11)
Samsung SM-940BW 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Silver/Black £147.99 (£173.89)
Antec NeoHE 550W Modular ATX2.0 PSU £74.99 (£88.11)
Intel Core 2 DUO E6400 "LGA775 Allendale" 2.13GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £129.99 (£152.74)
Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £79.99 (£93.99)
Crucial 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-5300C3 667MHz Ballistix Dual Channel Kit £169.99 (£199.74)
HIS ATI Radeon X1950 XT-X ICEQ 3 SILENT Heatpipe 512MB GDDR4 £199.99 (£234.99)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 200GB ST3200820AS SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM £43.99 (£51.69)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 775) £13.99 (£16.44)
Akasa Eclipse 62 Aluminium Case - No PSU £87.98 (£103.38)
Creative Inspire 5.1 P5800 Speakers - OEM £34.95 (£41.07)
Akasa AK-183-L2B Amber Ultra Quiet 120mm Fan - 3 pin £9.95 (£11.69)


Sub Total : £1,037.30
Shipping : £24.95
Vat : £185.89
Total : £1,248.14

Is it any good? Any suggestions on what to change/replace? Or would it be better to wait till the next lot of graphics cards and cpu come out in a couple of months

 

[yongja]

Are you going to overclock??

What resolution are you playing your games at?? Unless you are playing games at very high resolution I won't go any further than 1950pro/xt.

Although I've built my own machines a couple of times now I've never overclocked them. I must admit that I'm tempted but a bit overwhelmed by it all.

Currently play in 1280x800 but that's only because thats the native resolution on my monitor. If this monitor can handle higher I'll go higher.

Sod waiting for better value hardware to arise. You'll effectively be waiting forever.

The rig looks good, though I would replace the RAM with something like http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...rodid=MY-124-CS

About the graphics card, if you are doing a bit of gaming I'd say pay the bit extra and go for an 8800GTS as a way to futureproof the machine nicely. For general use, the X1950 Pro, of even a 7600GT would do nicely.

For the graphics card I thought buy the X1950 first then in 6 months time look at the market again when there's a bigger range of DX10 cards out there. Is the 8800GTS really worth the extra money?