Hardware advice needed re: PC upgrade

[Davey_Pitch]

Lynne and I are looking to upgrade our PC in the next week or so, and after a bit of checking I think the following should be pretty nice. Our budget is £700, though the following is slightly over as I forgot we'd need a PSU upgrade as well to cope with the new graphics card. Any comments on the following equipment?

PC Upgrade

Monitor

Asus VW193S 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Black
£104.99
£123.36 inc VAT
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-005-AS

CPU

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.66GHz (1333FSB) - Retail
£109.99
£129.24 inc VAT
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-157-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=793

Cooling

Noctua NH-U12F (Socket LGA775/754/939/940/AM2) Heatsink
£33.99
£39.94 inc VAT
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-002-NC

Motherboard

Gigabyte GA_P35C_DS3R (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 & DDR3 Motherboard
£69.99
£82.24 inc VAT
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-086-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=

Memory

Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C4 TwinX (2x1GB)
£66.99
£78.71 inc VAT
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-108-CS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=813

Graphics

Leadtek GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
£189.99
£223.24 inc VAT
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-095-LT&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=927

Power

OCZ StealthXStream 600w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Power Supply
£49.99
£58.74 inc VAT
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-023-OC&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=148

Total Cost

£735.47 inc VAT

We'll be upgrading from a Athlon XP 2800, 1GB Ram, X800XT setup, so it should be a pretty hefty increase in terms of speed. We'll be keeping our HDD (2x60GB SATA drives, as well as a 120GB ATA drive), DVD burner and case as they should be fine for what we need. We'll be keeping it on XP for now as well as I don't see much reason to upgrade it to Vista yet :)

[Mark]

What optical drive do you have? If it's PATA then putting that alongside the 120GB disk won't be ideal. The Gigabyte motherboards (like a lot of others) only have one IDE channel which is designed primarily for optical drives.

I went all-SATA (including optical drive) with mine.

[Dymetrie]

It all looks good to me Davey :) Is very similar to the machine my friend Darren has and he's a serious COD2 clan player!

[Davey_Pitch]

Hmmm, both the optical drive and the spare 120GB will have to go on the same IDE channel if that's the case. It wouldn't really bother me in terms of speed, the secondary 120GB drive will only be used for storage, the 2 SATA drives will be used for all games/apps/etc anyway.

[Davey_Pitch]

It all looks good to me Davey :) Is very similar to the machine my friend Darren has and he's a serious COD2 clan player!
That's good to know. Obviously the machine is being built with games in mind (hence the nice graphics card), so knowing it'll run all current games nicely is important as it'll need to last a couple of years before the next upgrade :)

[Haly]

Davey, that monitor is the one I've been using for my 360 and now I'm selling it as I'm switching to the HDTV when I get it next week.
Do you want it? Can't give it away unfortunately but it'd cost you a fair bit less than new even when factoring in postage.

It's a good monitor btw, Si recommended it to me and it's done me well :)

[Davey_Pitch]

Davey, that monitor is the one I've been using for my 360 and now I'm selling it as I'm switching to the HDTV when I get it next week.
Do you want it? Can't give it away unfortunately but it'd cost you a fair bit less than new even when factoring in postage.

It's a good monitor btw, Si recommended it to me and it's done me well :)
That'd be fantastic Jen, ta. I'll grab you on MSN tonight and we can discuss price etc then :)

Oh, and I've just checked Scan.co.uk and knocked about £60 off the total cost due to everything being cheaper there. Stuff you Crappity Smacktard, my money is going elsewhere ;D

[Haly]

Ok :)
Nice one with saving money with Scan :D

[Feek]

The NH-U12F is a decent HSF and should fit that board (it needs a lot of space), I found the airflow through it quite low because it's a very quiet fan so I replaced it with a more powerful one and dropped my temps by a few degrees.

[Davey_Pitch]

The NH-U12F is a decent HSF and should fit that board (it needs a lot of space), I found the airflow through it quite low because it's a very quiet fan so I replaced it with a more powerful one and dropped my temps by a few degrees.
Good to know, thanks. I'll see what the temps are like before swapping the fan out. Going from an AMD to Intel should see a drop in temps anyway :)

[Mark]

Feek's right about the Noctua (it doesn't fit the DS4, for example).

I find Scan to often, but not always, be a few ££ cheaper than OcUK. Plus they didn't do my Dell monitor. I'm prepared to look for the cheapest place, wherever that may be.

As for the optical drive situation, if you're saving money on the monitor, then might be worth considering this (http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=614076). It wouldn't be the first time that drive has been recommended here. :)

[Davey_Pitch]

As for the optical drive situation, if you're saving money on the monitor, then might be worth considering this (http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=614076). It wouldn't be the first time that drive has been recommended here. :)

Nice looking drive. It would certainly solve the speed problem with the old IDE HDD by having it on it's own channel. Thanks Mark :)

[leowyatt]

You could always drive up to scan and save more money on shipping :D

Even better is just email themanwhocan and get it on the today only page and get even more off ;)

[semi-pro waster]

All looks pretty good, you could purchase cheaper PC6400 or even PC5300 and still be able to run the CPU at the correct speed (1333/4 = 333.25 which is PC5300 speeds). If overclocking though that Ram may prove worthwhile.

If you are saving that much buying from Scan and Jen then it may be worth considering a larger and newer SATA hard drive - Football Manager still takes up a lot of space I believe. :)

[Davey_Pitch]

All ordered :) Should hopefully arrive on Thursday, so that's my next weekend sorted out anyway, installing all the new gear and re-installing Windows etc :)

[Haly]

Nice one :D