Sooze's shiny new PC: yay or nay?

[soozelwoozel]

I'm not entirely sure where this should go - it's a technical question but not directly related to either TS2 or TS3 so I plumped for RL.

I have to buy a new PC, as my laptop died on me the other week. (No Doms for Sooze, alas!). I want a decent rig which which will allow for upgrades in the future. I'll be using it to store music, watch TV/DVDs, surf the net, and for casual gaming. I only really play TS2, TS3, Oblivon and Civ 4 at the moment, but I'd like to be able handle more demanding games like Fallout 3. The very upper limit of my budget is £800, but I really don't want to be spending that much (poor student is poor).

So far this build is appealing to me:
--Intel Gaming Custom Built PC-- (from www.ginger6.com)
- 00 - CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (2x 3.00GHz) 1333, 6mb
- 00 - CPU Cooler - Standard Intel CPU Cooler
- 01 - Case - Cooler Master RC335 Elite Black
- 01 - Case Fans - Standard case fans
- 01 - Power Supply - 650w PowerCool 80+
- 02 - Motherboard Asus P5Q - P45 Chipset
- 03 - Memory - 4gb Kingston DDR2 800mhz CL6.0
- 04 - Hard Drive 1 - 500gb SATA2 Hard Drive
- 04 - Hard Drive 2 - ----------------
- 04 - Hard Drive 3 - ----------------
- 05 - Optical Drive 1 - 20x Dual Layer DVDRW Drive (Lightscribe)
- 05 - Optical Drive 2 - ----------------
- 06 - Floppy - ----------------
- 07 - Graphics - 512mb Nvidia GeForce 9800GT
- 08 - PCI Slot 1 - 54mbps Wireless LAN PCI Card
- 08 - PCI Slot 2 - Digital TV Tuner Card
- 09 - Keyboard & Mouse - ----------------
- 10 - Speakers - ----------------
- 11 - Operating System - Windows Vista Home Premium (64 bit)
- 12 - Office - ----------------
- 13 - Antivirus - ----------------
- 13 - Other Software - ----------------
- 14 - Monitor - 22" Asus Wide TFT Black 5ms
- 14 - Monitor 2 - ----------------
- 15 - Warranty - 12 Months RTB Warranty
- 17 - External Hard Drive - ----------------

What do you think? Is underpowered? Overpowered? An exquisite example of my fine taste or a pile of crap? It costs £758.84; so if you can see any areas where I can cut some cost without losing out too much on performance then that'd be awesome.

Edited to remove non-functioning link (Thanks Skadi)

[Skadi]

You could kill the OS, and go Pirate Cat. Otherwise it looks pretty sound. BTW your shopping cart link doesn't show anything for me - it would be cookie based.

[soozelwoozel]

Hmm, I hadn't considered that. How difficult is it to install all the various drivers yourself? I'm not completely technically illiterate but I'm no whizz kid either.

Also, thanks for the heads up on the link. D'oh, must have had a bit of a stupid moment there.

[Skadi]

If you go Win XP, it takes about 3 mins of work, plus letting the computer do it's thing to make a disc with the appropriate SATA drivers built in. I'm actually building one for Saraswati, going for a quad core Intel, 4gb ram, 1gb video card, burner, 1TB sata drive and Gigabyte mobo for $1100 AUD. I quite like what your looking at spec wise.

[Leticron]

I wouldn't worry too much about Lightscribe. The difference in price is just neglectable. I would loose ALL the software on your list and rather use either Jack Sparrow versions or just proven good freeware i.e Open Office instead of M$ Office, Avast as an antivirus etc.
Loose the Floppy and rather get the Multi Cardreader (or if you don't own a camera etc. loose it altogether
I personally would take the 1GB SATA, but I'm a notorious packrat. And just for good measure, add another Fan.

-le

[soozelwoozel]

Ah, that's my bad I'm afraid. I just copypastad from the site. All the parts on the list that are followed by -------- are components I'm not getting. I already use Avast, Open Office etc.

[crunk]

How much are they charging you for the monitor? You may be able to pick something up cheaper locally - remember, most flatscreen tvs will double as monitors and give you the option of TV. If you substitute a tv for the monitor, you could also drop the digital TV tuner altogether unless you really want to record tv or something.

[Zazazu]

I personally hate widescreen monitors with a passion. Do you have one now or have you had experience with one? I'd try one before spending anything on it.

Ditto on ditching Vista.

[J. M. Pescado]

Given your particular hardware configuration, I would actually go against the grain here and recommend you acquire Vista or Win7, but NOT pay for it: XP64 is noted for its terrible driver support, and with > 4 GBs of System + VRAMs, you need to be using 64bit. But DEFINITELY DO NOT GIVE MONEY TO MICROSOFT.

[soozelwoozel]

Gotcha. That'll save me a few squid then. I'll probably go for Windows 7, as I'd no doubt be upgrading to it later anyway.

[Starpoo]

I'd cut costs first at the case then maybe monitor (a 17 inch works fine for me, and the 15.4" on my laptop is fine as well). 650W seems like it may be too much, try 600 or 550. That could save you some... are those pounds?