[Barry McAuley]

Hi all, I'm looking to buy a new Gaming PC and customized one on pc-specialist.com. Based on the review I read for the Processor and Graphics Card it seemed like it would do the job. The price is cming in at £623. Here is the spec:

Processor (CPU) - AMD PHENOM II X4 945 3.0 GHz SOCKET AM3 8MB CACHE
Memory (RAM) - 4GB CORSAIR XMS3 DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz - LIFETIME WARRANTY
Motherboard - ASUS® M4A79XTD EVO: DUAL DDR3, S-ATA II, 2 x PCIe x16, 2 x PCIe x1, 2 x PCI
Operating System - NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
USB Options - 6 x USB 2.0 PORTS (4 REAR + 2 FRONT) AS STANDARD
Memory - 1st Hard Disk - 500GB SERIAL ATA 3-Gb/s HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (7,200rpm)
1st CD/DVD Drive - 22x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Graphics Card - 1GB ATI RADEON™ HD 4850X2 PCI EXPRESS (Special Offer)
Sound Card - Sound Blaster® Audigy™ SE (£24)
Network Facilities - ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
Memory Card Reader - INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (READS XD, MS, CF, SD, etc)
Case - STYLISH PIANO BLACK FUSION CASE inc. 2 FRONT USB
Power Supply & Case Cooling - 600W Quiet Quad Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£59)
Processor Cooling - STANDARD CPU COOLER
Firewire & Video Editing - 2 x IEEE 1394a FIREWIRE PORTS (1 onboard, 1 at back panel)

There is an option to get an ASUS® CROSSHAIR III FORMULA: DDR3 - Republic of Gamers, CrossfireX motherboard. This would bump the price up to £684 from £623. Would the price increase be justified?

I want to be able to play all the games out atm and still be able to run new games for a few years at a decent fps.

There are a few other single card options; 1GB ATI RADEON™ HD 4870 PCI EXPRESS is £614, not much of a price reduction, would it be worth the extra £9 to get the 1GB ATI RADEON™ HD 4850X2 PCI EXPRESS?
Another option is the 1GB ATI RADEON™ HD 4890 PCI EXPRESS which is £652. What do you think would be the best option?

From what I've read DDR3 RAM seems to be the way of the future, I wanted to get it just so I wouldn't have to worry about upgrading the RAM for a few years. Would there really be no benefit in getting DDR3 over DDR2 without an I7? If I did decide to drop the DDR3 I would have to go for a different prebuild as the only option is DDR3.

So what does everyone think? Is it a rip-off? Would I be better of going for a different Processor Graphics Card Combo? Is pc-specialit the best site for this or are there cheaper alternatives? Is the motherboard up to scratch? Should I buy a more robust cooling system (I don't plan on over-clocking the system so I figured the standard cooling system would suffice)?

If anyone would like to give me some advice I would be really grateful.
Thanks in advance,
Barry

[Carbon]

Build it yourself - if you really can't, ask somebody who can, whether a shop or someone you know or something. You are getting overcharged, your parts are going to be horrific quality (PSU in particular, although "500GB" HDD means you're also subjected to a drive lottery), etc.

With that said if you have that much money to spend on the CPU the i5 750 substantially beats the X4 945. However, the money is best spent on the GPU: the 4890 is a much better card than the 4850X2. Sound card's pretty much useless, DDR3-1600 on a AMD system isn't going to give you any reasonable boost (as you thought), although you're right it might be nice to have later on.

If you post your resolution & budget, it would be a lot easier.

[Barry McAuley]

My resolution is 1920 x 1200 and I wouldn't want to spend more than £700 on the tower alone.

[xactly]

Crap case and PSU.

PC Power & Cooling or Antec PSU 600W minimum.

To cool down the components I would reccomend and Antec Twelve Hundered or Cooler Master HAF 932; both have incredible airflow.

[Carbon]

Originally Posted by Barry McAuley

My resolution is 1920 x 1200 and I wouldn't want to spend more than £700 on the tower alone.

Then what I'd do is try to fit that 4890 in with a better case and PSU if you must buy from this site. An i5 system would be a good pick if there's budget left over - otherwise, I wouldn't bother with the X4 945 and would choose the X3 720. The X4 945 just isn't in a good place right now - the i5 is a very good contender in the high-end quad segment and the X3 720 is a very quick and cheap midrange processor.

I wouldn't recommend the Twelve Hundred - it's a massively overpriced case with pretty much zero features, and airflow is quite overrated (it's best to throw a nice heatsink on a CPU for $30 than to buy a case like that, even if it were usually a concern)