Hi, i'm looking to buy a new air cooled gaming & general purpose pc and im finding difficulty in finding the right stuff for me - ive got about +/- £850 to spend on the actual pc (i know what screen im getting ). I've been searching for a while now and i can't make my mind up on what components to chose Im not going to be wanting to overclock. and im looking to buy either the Phenom II X4 955 or the Intel i5 processor - (cant decide which one to go with as some reviews say that i5 is better for gaming) here's the list ive come up with so far: Silverstone Raven 2 RV02 Case (£110) Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P AMD Motherboard (£95) AMD Phenom II 3.20Ghz Processor (£130) Xigmatek Dark Knight CPU Cooler (£40) 1GB XFX Radeon 5850 (£230) OCZ Reaper 1333Mhz 4GB (£90) 600W Coolermaster Silent Pro Modular Power Supply (£75) 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3 Hard Disk (£60) Creative Labs SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCI-Express x1 Sound Card (£35) - don't need a great soundcard haven't missed anything out have I (apart from optical drive) Any advice or opinions are welcome Thanks!
For gaming, and particularly if you don't intend to overclock, I think you would be better off with a Core i5. The "turbo boost" feature should be of benefit when gaming. You may wish to take a look at the Titan Skalli as a CPU cooler. I personally don't like Creative soundcards. Their drivers are crap. If you don't need a good soundcard then you may want to give the onboard sound a try.
ok, so i went with the i5 system, here's my list, any views and opinions from anybody? Silverstone RV02 Raven 2 Case (£110) Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3 Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard (£100) Intel Core i5 750 2.66Ghz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156) (£150) XFX ATI Radeon HD 5850 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (£240) OCZ Gold 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 Low-Voltage Dual Channel Memory Kit (£70) Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache (£60) Coolermaster Silent Pro Modular 600W Power Supply (£85) Noctua NH-U12P SE2 Dual Fan Quiet CPU Cooler (£60)