no....just build your own...hell of a lot cheaper and more fun

Sticking this here as a bit of a placeholder so I can compare the price of this setup now with Feb/March.

CPU: Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 - £669.74
CPU Cooler: Dunno - ~£40
Motherboard: ASUS P5KR - £73.54
Memory: 2GB Corsair XMS2 PC-8500 - £79.72
Video card: ScanFX 8800GTX - £234.87
OS Drive (SSD): Tentatively looking at getting Mtron Pro 7000 32GB (or two 16s in RAID0), but don't know yet. - could add ~£600, but not included in total.
OS Drive (Conventional): 74GB WD Raptor - £85.65
PSU: Corsair 650W TX - £85.36
DVD Drive: Dunno - ~£25
OS - Windows Vista Home Premium OEM - £66.45 (32 bit because of the driver problems I've been reading about with 64 bit - could change nearer the time if things improve...)
Monitor: Dunno - 22" LCD probably - ~£200
Case: Antec P182 - £86.82
Keyboard: Dunno - £25
Mouse: Dunno - £25

Total: £1697.15 (including the Raptor HD)

edit: Updated OS thanks to ajp71.

Quote from amp88 :

OS - Windows Vista Home Premium (bloody Microshaft, costs as much as a high end graphics card - no wonder so many people pirate...) - £195.01

Just buy the OEM version (£62) ignore all the system builder stuff you just put the disc in and install your OS, only snag is I think it locks to your motherboard which the standard version doesn't, although so long as you can prove to Microsoft it's not a new PC I think you'll be able to re-install on a new mobo if you upgrade.

Quote from ajp71 :

Just buy the OEM version (£62) ignore all the system builder stuff you just put the disc in and install your OS, only snag is I think it locks to your motherboard which the standard version doesn't, although so long as you can prove to Microsoft it's not a new PC I think you'll be able to re-install on a new mobo if you upgrade.

Good point, the OEM 32 and 64 bit Home Premium versions are 'only' about £65 and the ultimate editions are about £105.

Spend the £20 more on a P5K-E, you'll get a MUCH higher quality board.

The QX9650 is VERY nice, but the "X" series are hardly ever worth it - soon the Q9450 will come out which is a "bit" slower (ie 2.66 GHz, 6 mb Cache), but will quite happily overclock well in excess of the QX9650 speeds.

I'd also get a "brand name" GFX card for the warranty, rather than going for a ScanFX thingy.

EDIT - £234 for a GTX?! It's outta stock, so i'm sure that it'll go back to £300-ish when it comes back in stock...

I might be having another blonde moment, but I don't see any P5K-E board on Scan, only P5K Premium...?

The reason I'm consdering getting the QX9650 is that I don't plan on overclocking at all, and considering I'm intending to keep this PC for some time to come (3 years+) I reckon it might be worth paying a couple of hundred quid extra for the better overall and single core performance of the QX9650 compared to the lower clocked/specced models in the range.

I wondered why that particular graphics card was so much cheaper than other similarly specced ones, I suppose that's the reason.

Paying double the price for a few (ie about 200) more MHz is absolute madness imo, but it's your money...

P5K-E - http://www.scan.co.uk/Products ... o.asp?WebProductID=615971

Cheers for the link...for whatever reason searching for "p5k-e" doesn't contain that page.

edit: I can see what you're saying about the value for money of the QX9650 but the way I see it I'd put in another couple of days wages for something that I'll see the benefit of for years.

If you want to get the benefit of £300 for years to come, then 4 GB of RAM, RAID0 HDD's or SLi graphics cards will get you more improvment.

I still think overclocking would help you though...

Quote from Jakg :

If you want to get the benefit of £300 for years to come, then 4 GB of RAM, RAID0 HDD's or SLi graphics cards will get you more improvment.

I still think overclocking would help you though...

Will I see the benefit of 4GB of RAM vs 2GB with a 32 bit OS?

If I go for the SSD drives then I'll probably RAID0 2 of the 16GB models and I suppose if I was going for Raptors I could RAID0 2 of the 36GB models, but I'm not convinced of the performance benefits of RAID0 mechanical drives in normal usage.

Getting SLI could be an idea, I'll maybe take another look into that.

On the overclocking front, I might be tempted to dabble in it, but I reckon the system should be plenty fast enough for me to begin with. Making a leap from an Athlon 2700+ to the QX9650 should keep me happy for a while. I have seen a couple of reviews of the QX9650 where they were getting up to about 4GHz on air cooling, so there's definitely going to be potential there anyway.

Why do you want a 32-bit OS? I'm running 64-bit just fine, provided you've got no "weird" hardware it should all be compatible...

The main thing that's holding me back from the 64-bit OS is the inability to load unsigned drivers I keep reading about. There have been plenty of times when I've needed to install unsigned drivers in the past, I couldn't do that with 64-bit Vista as I understand it.

I've had NO issues so far (except TAT and ATiTool not working, but i've not WANTED to use either yet...)

How frequently did you used to get the unsigned driver screen in Win XP?

Quite frequently, however the only time i've ever seen the Vista equivalent is when i install my XtremeG graphics drivers.

Ok, cool. I'll take it into consideration nearer the time

I heard there'll be a service pack out around the time too, so that might push me nearer to it.

Decided to buy myself a new monitor ahead of time (bought a Wii with a couple of friends and I've only got a 14" TV to play it on at the moment...) so I went a little over my budget for the monitor and got a BenQ FP241W. I've only bought one thing and already I'm more than 100% over budget...

Merry Xmas a day early! Hope you love it!

Quote from srdsprinter :

Merry Xmas a day early! Hope you love it!

Cheers, Merry Christmas to you too. Sadly I've only ordered it so I won't get it until Friday or Monday

Quote from amp88 :

Cheers, Merry Christmas to you too. Sadly I've only ordered it so I won't get it until Friday or Monday

Ah well, at least no matter what else you got today, you know what you really want is already on the way. Please let us know how it is, and how lfs plays at that resolution

Quote from srdsprinter :

Ah well, at least no matter what else you got today, you know what you really want is already on the way. Please let us know how it is, and how lfs plays at that resolution

Sadly my DFP broke a few days before Christmas (outside the 1 year warranty) so I haven't been driving lately. Been considering getting a G25 but I haven't been feeling the itch as much lately as I used to (nothing to do with the new patch, just not feeling like I want to drive as much). Might end up not driving in LFS any more, I dunno.

Anyway, on the monitor. I'm moving up from a ~6 year old 17" Medion CRT to what the reviews I've read say should be a pretty decent medium-end 24" LCD, so I'm looking forward to the change. Just need to wait now...

Been reading up a bit on the new range of X48 motherboards that are coming out and wondering if it's worth holding back on buying the system until those come out and mature a bit? At the moment I'm thinking of waiting until the end of January before I get the new PC, but if X48 is going to offer anything significant in terms of performance/features I might hold back for a while.