i've put the odd post on the past couple of months, but i've mostly been reading everyone else's problems/solutions/reviews/suggestions. i know the census is mostly a q6600 + 8800gt, but ive never been an intel kinda guy... i didn't have a big budget to work with as i have an unexpected kid on the way so i had to cut back on many of the original plans. i was hoping to create the complete spider, as you may have guessed im an AMD kinda guy. and seems i'm upgrading from a vapochilled duron, any upgrade is going to make a huge difference So with my £800 budget i wanted to make a comp fast enough to handle all what today can throw at it and leave room for it to be improved for tomorrows games aswell. So i went for: AMDx2 5000+ BE (plan to upgrade to a 2.8 phenom when they become available) MSI K9A2 CF TeamXtreem 2gb 800mhz (2x1gb) Samsung Spinpoint 160gb ATI 3870xt extreme (plan to get a second one down the line) pcp&p 750w psu the annoying thing about my system at the moment is im running Ubuntu as my OS and there are no linux drivers for my card yet and i don't have a copy of windows so i'll have to wait, though i am trying to acquire a copy off my family. the system extras i opted for were: merc stealth keyboard razer death adder ( i decided on this mouse after reading a bit tech review ) nova eswc mp.1 mat medusa 5.1 pro gamer headset bare in mind i have never owned a mouse worth more than a fiver and have been using a clipboard as a mouse mat the past 2 years. and the final upgrade to complete the system is the samsung 223bw 22" widescreen monitor. what can i say about the monitor... since im upgrading from a 15" crt i suppose the reflection in the microwave window would be an improvement. im using the silent knight2 cpu cooler, which i chose purely cause i like the way it looks and i plan in the future to watercool the whole pc anyways. i haven't started overclocking much yet as its still early days but i have upped the fsb to 215 making the cpu run at 2.72ghz its not a vast clock but its a stable starting point also i used my old case which is a lian-li pc75 which has been jigsaw damaged from the vapochill installation on the previous system. images of that one can still be found here the whole system runs great and have had no issues other than no linux driver for the gfx *yet* well i hope my decisions help with yours and thanx for the helping choose and build my perfect pc - also i have a vapochill pe on offer if anyone is interested?
noise, and im hoping to get a zalman gt1000, which a vapo wont fit in, silence is key to this and all future mods and upgrades.