this summer ati comes with new video cards, the 4xxx series.
later this year amd will start selling 45nm b3 stepping phenoms.
there is always progress.

im a huge amd fanboy and even i say dont buy phenom, wait till the 45nm phenoms are ready and buy a cheap 90 euro 5000be for now. it oc's better then the 5200 to 5800 of amd.

each psu has its pro's but im quiet fond of the silverstone st50ef+.
it has the highest efficient among the 500 watt psu's.
my computer with 5000be and hd3870 runs at 67watt idle, cpu is 2 degree above ambient during idle.

currently the most thrustwordy mobo's are the gigabyte dq6 ds5 and ds4.
they are not the best overclockers but you will have the least problems with these. (i bought the dq6 for 229 euro together with amd5000be for 125)

fastest hd with average read and write atm is the samsung F1 spinpoint 1gb 32mb cache 219 euro. i have seen people put 4 of these in raid.
fast one after that is the seagate barracuda 500gb 7200.11 32mb cache 105 euro. this is the one i have.
the seagate barracuda 250gb 7200.10 16mb cache is about 60 euro and is best bang for buck hd im my oppinion.

if i play quake4 1600 1200 ultra quality no aa, i got cpu usage of 30% with the 60fps cap at 2800mhz.

crysis 1600 1200 physics very high quality and graphics medium quality, i get 35 40 fps, game looks great.

I got this pilled up togther an im going to order tomorrow.
im just not sure witch motherboard to get.

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 S 775 2.66 GHz 1333MHz FSB 12MB Cache Retail £186.00
NZXT Hush Classic Case Aluminum Midtower Black- NO PSU £49.50
Corsair 520W HX Series Modular PSU ATX EPS12V whisper quiet 5 year warranty £49.49
Akasa AK-920 EVO 120 Direct Heatpipe Copper with Fan Controller (Socket 754/939/775/478) £23.50
Corsair® 2GB DDR2 XMS2 Dominator DHX PC2-8500C5 TwinX (2x1GB) Twin2X2048-8500C5D £51.49
BFG GeForce 512MB 8800GTS PCI-E 2.0 (x16) Mem 1940MHz GDDR3 GPU 675MHz 2x Dual Link DVI/HDTV Graphics Card £160.00
Pioneer DVR-215BK 20x DVD±R 10x DVD±DL DVD+RW x8/-RW x6 DVD-RAM x12 SATA Black OEM £16.79
Trust KB-2200 Multimedia Scroll Keyboard £7.99
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB 7200RPM S300 16MB £44.25
Western Digital Raptor X 150GB S150 10,000rpm £129.95

ive been looking at these 2 motherboards.
http://www.advancetec.co.uk/acatalog/info%5f29020810%2ehtml

http://www.advancetec.co.uk/acatalog/info%5f1801084%2ehtml

tell me wat you think
thx.

Im not into intel,but I do know that intel+nvidia makes a good combo.And intel can overclock very very easy,for clocking amd u need alot of knowledge.

I would only change the case there,Coolermaster RC690-KKN1-GP is today deffinetly a best buy case,gives the best bang for buck,offering plenty of room for ventilation/blowers,guides for cables and u get 3 fans stock.Price is arround 50-60 GBP here.

wrote:

So you know quite bad P35 is unquestioningly the best chipset for Intel. X38 is going to be nice too, but it's not much better than P35 so far, maybe it gonna be in the soon future.

U misunderstood...I wasnt referring to intel + nvidia chipset,I was referring to intel + nvidia gfx card.

wrote:

And there is no 'intel easy overclock rule', you can make biggers scores at Intel cuz it's better susceptibility for overclocking than AMD. World records @Intel are about 8+GHz and @AMD 5+GHz(?). But it's true, Intel is better for newbies, cuz it's easier to make bigger score at it without knowledge.

On AMD overclocking becomes a philosophy if u really wanna do it properly.RD790 and phenoms are known to be dying alot and u need to know which combination is a bad one.Same goes for RAM,D9GMH micron chips die alot,u need to know why and how to avoid it.On AMD there are problems with high Vdimm,above 2.2v is NOT recommended,while on intel ppl run high voltage on RAM with no problems.And then we get to BIOS and options which can cause alot of problems and dead hardware,in other words,AMD is much more risky then intel.

maximum voltage for ram is 2.1, more it just stupid.
this is for intel and amd.
phenoms died alot because they where getting the max out of the phenom ratz.
and offcourse they are among the first batch, intel has problems with first batches as well. the intel 45nm was delayed a bit due to problems also.