First time upgrade ...

[jlmacd]

I am looking to upgrade or, more likely, replace my son's pc. This is a first attempt at building a system and, whilst not a complete computer novice, I would certainly appreciate any advice or guidance.
I am not certain whether to buy a motherboard bundle or whether to build from scratch. I know 'future proofing' is a bit of a myth but wondered if going all out for a fast (quad-core?) processor at this stage is recommended or unnecessary.
The present set up is archaic and the only components I am considering keeping would be HDD (80Gb ATA) and PCI Network card (Belkin Pre-N Wireless for internet). May replace network card with 'Homeplug' though as wireless signal is not great in current location. Monitor, keyboard, mouse etc are all new.
Useage will be mostly apps, games and internet. Already have case (Akasa Zen) and just bought 9600GT graphics card.
Was considering the following from Novatech:

Motherboard Bundle Intel Pentium Dual Core E5200 2048MB 667Mhz DDR2 Heatsink And Fan MCP73P Motherboard
ThermalTake TR2 Value 470W PSU (or larger?)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB SATA II 7200rpm 16Mb Cache OR Western Digital Caviar Blue 250GB 16Mb Cache Hard Drive SATAII
Optiarc Lightscribe AD-7201S

Got a bit lost with huge choice of PSU's but, given the above which it will have to power and the case it has to live in, would welcome any advice here.

Many thanks, in advance, for your time if you can help.

[JDowdall]

For a first build you have chosen a very good spec, i cant see any problems with that :) good psu, opportunity for expansion, if you really want to you could probably save maybe £20 building it completely yourself, and then putting that into a different motherboard to get more performance out of that cpu (by overclocking) but very good build imho

and either of those hdd's will be fine

[jlmacd]

Thank you for the reply. Any recommendations regarding a better motherboard?

Never attempted overclocking cpu - is this difficult ? (Noticed there is a board here dedicated to this - sorry, should have gone there before asking the question!)

[JDowdall]

No problem :) are you seriously considering building yourself?

i would reccomend
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?GIG-EP313L Gigabyte G31motherboard
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?IL-E5200 Intel 5200 2.5ghz processor
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?GEL-BD644G Geil Black Dragon 4gb memory

this may be about £5 more however this gets you a quality motherboard and double the ram :)

overclocking is a process for making your parts run faster but should only be attempted with some prior knowledge :) if you buy good parts then you can easily make your processor run at maybe 2.8ghz, or at the speed of a £125 processor :) There are some good guides in the overclocking forum

[jlmacd]

Many thanks again! Notice the motherboard supports 1066MHz memory, should I be looking to buy this or is this unnecessary? (Can see that the 800MHz version you recommend is half the price. Great as I am not looking to squander money!)
Also, thought of investing in the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro cooler to accompany the cpu - is this wise choice?
Sorry for all the questions but just want to try to get it right 1st time.

[JDowdall]

The motherboard supports this memory, however 800Mhz memory will be fine too :) the difference between 1066Mhz and 800Mhz is neglible :)
That memory is very good :) i have 2gb of the stuff and it is very good value and quality
Have you been looking @ my signature? :P The arctic freezer 7 pro is a very good cooler, if you are looking to get extra life out of your processor or overclock it @ all this is a very good cooler, brilliant value for money :)

[jlmacd]

Finally finished build couple of weeks ago. Just wanted to say thanks for all the advice given by JDowdall and to happily report that the end product was a success! Hugely enjoyed the learning curve and was pleasantly surprised to find it wasn't over daunting. Looked into the overclocking of the processor and, whilst tempting, figured as the system was sweet then 'if it ain't broke - don't fix it!' (or rather 'don't break it!')
Only dilemma now is that, having built this, I have whetted my appetite to build another system (for myself this time). Not trying to run too quick but wondered if anyone could proffer any advice regarding the i7 breed of processors? Want a fairly high spec for the build and am looking at the Gigabyte Socket 1366 m/bs and probably an i7 920. Wondering if this may be o.t.t. and if a Quad Core may be enough? Have recently bought an (almost new) XFX nVidia 9600GT graphics card - not cutting edge I know but seems adequate. Aside from 'normal' use, I need a system for video editing/transcoding and dvd burning. Also, having built system for my son for gaming, I now realise that both my current desktop and laptop machines are woefully inadequate to support the likes of 'Red Alert 3' and to fulfil my expected role as 'the Opposition' ! Am looking to include a couple of Optiarc drives: a BC 5100S for BluRay playback and an AD-7203S for dvd writing. Monitor will 22" Asus full HD model.

Rest of spec to be added but would welcome any input.
Many thanks to all.

[Asce]

I7 should be the way to go for what you are doing. The 920is more than faster enough and the 330mhz increase to the 940 isnt worth the extra few hundred £ increase.

[NeilX90]

Well... my opinion, for what it's worth, is that the i7 is currently on the edge of the Law of Diminishing Returns. Now would be the perfect time for you to enter the world of overclocking and get the previous-gen technology, saving yourself a packet.

The board's benchmarks have proved time after time that the humble Q6600, once overclocked, is a fabulous piece of kit. Add to that an Asus P5-series board, 4Gb of DDR2-800, a solid after-market cooler and you have the basis of an excellent editing/encoding/gaming machine. For a 22" monitor I'd probably opt for an ATI 4850 GPU which will have no problems with pretty much any game you care to throw at it.

Overclocking is not a dark art, as long as you stick to reasonable levels - it's the folks who like to push the benchmarks to the last frame or thousandth of a second that really start delving into memory timings et.al. A modest overclock does not need that level of attention and will really boost your machine's performance for the outlay of a cooler.

One you start getting into i7 tech., you're into serious money at the moment (P58 mobos, DDR3 RAM etc etc) and, for me, is not worth the investment when the Q-series quads will deliver exactly what you want. Yes, the i7 gear is superior.... you pays yer money, etc.

The savings could be used to buy a nice little RAID setup (with a lot of spare change !) to protect your video work.

My 2p !

[Baggpuss]

i7 is good, but with that comes the greater expense. Really depends on how much you are willing to spend.

[jlmacd]

Many thanks for all the feedback. Have decided, after perusing other areas of the forum regarding o/c ing, that I will most probably opt for the Q6600. Not just because of price but also, from what I have read, that maybe, for me, it is early days to be delving into the i7 technology.
So, next up, I wanted to ask what best choice of mobo would be to glean the best performance from this CPU? For the build I did for my son I used (on recommendation) a Gigabyte motherboard to take the E5200 cpu. Seemed an excellent piece of kit and all went well. Manual/instructions etc were all very comprehensive. Should I go down this route again or what about the Asus P5 m/b which was mentioned. Am more than happy to receive others perceived wisdom on this.

[Baggpuss]

The Asus P5Q comes reccomended by a fair few people (tis also what im essentially using but mines got a couple extra bits). Have found it to be a great board.