Gaming pc build

Wh1skeyjack

Hi there,
I've recently decided to relegate my old PC to media PC duties, and have decided to build myself a new gaming PC. I've a 26" monitor already, so I'd like to be able to game at its native resolution of 1920x1200. Having recently become addicted to Battlefield Bad Company 2 I'd like to be able to run that at full tilt
I've attached a jpg. Any suggestions as to potential improvements? I have separately ordered a 128gb crucial M225 to serve as my OS/games drive. I'm hoping this rig will last me another 3-4 years. My budget is around €2000.

Thanks for any advice

Solitaire

For gaming you're usually better off with a i5-860+P55 combination.

Do you really need the X-Fi?

And beware - that cooler may be good but from what I've heard its noisy as hell

Effluo

There are better cases than the Antec 900 for the money too.

Those prices are from scan?
Well they don't look the best, so shop around and check out hardwareversand.de (which also offer building for only 20euro) and ebuyer.com
skinflint.co.uk will also offer you many store options, but those two I mention offer some of the best value

You're unfortunate to be buying now as the way that the gpu market is right now it's so uncompetitive.

Wh1skeyjack

Solitaire wrote: »

For gaming you're usually better off with a i5-860+P55 combination.

Do you really need the X-Fi?

And beware - that cooler may be good but from what I've heard its noisy as hell

From looking at benchmarks on sites like tomshardware etc it seems that the i7 930 is a faster processor than the i5 860? For example here http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-desktop-cpu-charts-update-1/Far-Cry-2-1.0.1,1401.html

If you have some link to reviews that show otherwise, please post them and I'll have a look.
As for the cooler, I saw it recommended in CustomPC, didn't mention the noise levels but I usually wear headphones so I'm not too bothered. Decided on the X-Fi as it has has an optical out so I can easily connect it to my Onkyo receiver if I feel like some surround sound action. Any other holes to be picked in it aside from that? Thanks for the feedback so far.

god's toy

Wh1skeyjack wrote: »

Decided on the X-Fi as it has has an optical out so I can easily connect it to my Onkyo receiver if I feel like some surround sound action.

As does your mobo too;

Wh1skeyjack

Aha!
Excellent spot there god's toy, will teach me to look more closely at the specs. Out it goes so. The onboard sound will be able to handle EAX etc perfectly well then I would assume?

Effluo, was on hardwareversand.de, found it takes a little bit of guesswork as the English site isn't perfectly translated for a lot of things. Good prices though, could have bought the Crucial SDD for €25 less than from Crucial's own site! One thing I'm wondering about is the graphics card, I was looking at the 5970. I don't think it's worth the €200 odd premium over the 5870, but as I want this rig run games decently over the next 4 years is there any argument for getting one?

Solitaire

€200 premium? Given its 2 HD5870s squashed together I'd say that's excellent value! :P

But many would claim the best value would be in hunting down an Asus HD5850 (or any old HD5850, if you don't mind voiding the warranty), overvolting it and OCing it to hell and back!

And am I the only one who's noticed how HWVS are systematically stripping out all the English on their site?! :eek:

Effluo

Solitaire wrote: »

And am I the only one who's noticed how HWVS are systematically stripping out all the English on their site?! :eek:

Really?
translate.google.com is our friend

Have gotten used to all the german over the last 9 months though, went through a period of looking for cheaper hard-ware websites last year. No idea why I did it

Solitaire

There used to be an awful lot of English on that site - aside from the odd mistranslation and German term we all knew the meaning of only PSUs and some specsheets were German-only until recently. Now even the category headers are German! :eek: