[canonuk]

Hey guys,

I'm finally getting round to building a new system. Would you be able to glance over what I plan to get and see if you can spot any glaring errors? This setup is an excellent price for me so I'm not looking for improvements, merely if I've overlooked some conflict or problem.

Thanks!

Joe

[JudgeMingus]

At first glance, it looks like 500W is borderline for your power supply.

You might want to go with something around the 650W mark to ensure system stability.

EDIT: I just checked a couple of power supply calculators (http://educations.newegg.com/tool/psucalc/index.html and http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine) and they gave results from around 500W to 611W as the minimum power supply level for the system config as you provided.

[fly_zo]

... may i suggest CPU cooler as one of add-ons ... i'm using Zalman and i 'm pretty much satisfied with it


just a thought ....


Z

[Spartan10590]

I'd recommed:

CPU: The Q6600 is good

Motherboard: G31 is crap. Don't skimp on the motherboard. You want at least a P35 chipset, preferably on a board made by Gigabyte. ASUS had become pretty flaky as of late. I'd recommend the GA-EP35-DS3L or just the vanilla GA-P35-DS3L. It's still a budget board but one that will give you all of the features you really need plus a few others. It's also extremely stable and overclocks well for its price.

Memory: Unless you are on a 64bit operating system, anything over 2-3GB is no needed. I'd stick with 2GB of higher end RAM, such as Crucial Ballistix.

Video Card: Look into an HD4850 or HD4870. Both of these cards outperform the 9800. Let me just say that there is a reason that Nvidia is cutting prices left and right at this time, and it's not because they don't feel like making as much money as usual... ATI is really sticking it to them with the HD4000s.

I'd recommend a Seagate 7200.11 drive over the Western Digital ones. I have a 750GB Caviar SE16, and even a 500GB Seagate can really leave my drive behind in access times/read speeds/pretty much everything.

[Nocturnum]

You're just going to love it when you fly on this new set-up. The water! The frame rates!

[vonofterdingen]

I second Fly Zo's suggestion. With the CPU cooler you can clock the Q6600 to 3ghz without it even breathing hard.

[BigSilverHotdog]

Definitely an aftermarket CPU cooler for overclocking that fantastic CPU. Don't get that mobo, the Gigabyte one spartan mentioned is good, as are the ABIT IP35 series (IP35 PRO being the best). Do NOT buy an ATI card if you are an IL2 player. The 9800GTX is also not worth the extra money, I'd go back a bit and get the 8800 GT or GTS 512, even now. Take it from someone who has owned and worked with a lot of the recent ATI cards -- they're not worth it. I had ATI for the 9700, X800, X1900 eras as they were generally superior to Nvidia competition, but after that they've sucked mightily. If you consider yourself a hardcore gamer these days, you've got to buy Nvidia. Some people have good results with the HD 3000-4000 series, and indeed for some games they're great, but IL2 is not one of them.

Good luck!

[miker8]

BSHdog, m8 is it the price of the 9800gtx that isn't worth to buy the card or is it the performance... both or something else maybe.