motherbord - Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H Intel Skt 775 Onboard VGA 8-Channel Audio mATX Motherboard
The mobo is a bit meh, why exactly have you selected a Micro ATX board? Yhe card you are going for suggests that a micro system isn't the goal. Anyway the board has limited expansion ports, it has only one PCI-e slot and whilst it does have two PCI slots the card you chose requires a double slot so chances are you will lose one of your PCI slots right off. The board also only has two RAM slots so you're hamstringing your choice of RAM module sets ups. It has onboard graphics which is a waste of cash.
For £7 more you could grab something like this
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-293-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1485
More memory slots, higher clocked FSB so better CPU compatability. A wider range of additional expansion slots. It also has the instant on options that load a cut down version of linux allowing you to boot and be online in a few seconds, assuming you don't want to load in to Windows just to check email or something. It's also an Asus board which I've found to be rock solid, as well as easy and stable when it comes to OCing.
RAM - Kingston 2GB 667MHz DDR2 Non-ECC CL5 SODIMM
Dunno what OS you're planing to use but if you do go for XP then 2gig will be more than enough. Saying that you can get 667Mhz RAM with much much tighter CL timing for just a few quid more. Won;t really help in every day use but it can be useful if you decided to OC the CPU. If you're going for Vista 64bit then 4gig will be required.
hard drive - Generic Hard Disk Drive 250GB IDE - 1 Year Warranty
Bad bad move, let's break this down, in a modern computer the slowest thing in it will be the HD. The HD will always always always be your bottleneck. Nothing says potential for poor performance like generic. Seriously I owned a 250gig Samsung then upgraded to one of the terabyte Samsung F1s, the difference was amazing. Incidentally I paid 64 quid for my 1 terabyte drive but the F1 drives come in a range of sizes and they really are superb drives for the cash. Probably the fastest you can buy without going in to the stupid money that's needed for Raptors and SSDs.
Oh and by pass IDE by a country mile, IDE is gone you need a Sata drive. IDE has a fair few issues. Firsty it's slow, second if your HD and DVD drive are both IDE they have to share the same IDE port which means when you use one you hamstring the bandwidth the other can use.
PSU - 700W Black CiT ATX Power Supply with 12cm silent fan
That PSU costs £34 and produces 700W. I paid £86 for my PSU and it produces 520W. What's the difference? To clarify when it comes to the PSU DO NOT, EVER go for cheap as chips. High Wattage output and low price = crappy PSU. Now a crappy PSU will range from a number of things. Unstable Vcore rails that make OCing impossible, poor power efficiency which means it draws more power from the wall socket than it really needs to and lacks features such as PFC. Poor surge and fault protection which means if it blows it takes your £1,000 PC with it, crap Amperages which means that whilst it provides the power it still won't drive all your hardware.
In the case of that PSU.
It doesn't state anywhere what it's efficiency is nor does it state if it has PFC so chances are it doesn't have PFC and it has poor efficiency. The biggest issue you have with that PSU though is that the 12V rail only produces 16Amps. I ran an 8800GTS 320MB and it will need at least 24Amps if not more to run stable. Now their are cheap and good PSUs out there, I've read a few reviews over the years for some but I'll be buggered if I can remember the names. This is one you may have to look around for.
graphics - nvidia geforce 8800 GTS 512mb
Good card, ran the 320MB version until I got my 260GTX. Will easily run Fallout with most of the features up high and will do a decent job of Crysis but who cares about that since Crysis sucks monkey balls. Other than that it will happily deal with most modern games with little need to compromise on most features.
Why does it require two HDMIs ports? A PC monitor doesn't require any HDMI ports? Anyway I can tell you that you can get a decent 22' monitor with one HDMI input. I know because I own one, but the second you go looking for that second HDMI port you cut the range you can buy and jack the price up by about an extra £100.
Intel BX80571E7400 E7400 Core 2 Duo Processor - 2.80 GHz,3MB Cache,1066MHz FSB,Socket LGA775,45 nm,3 Year Warranty,Retail Boxed
Fine, no real alternative for the cash, not the greatest, slower FSB, hamstrung cache amount, not the best OCer but beyond that chances are you will never notice the difference between this and the 8series C2D in every day use.
DVD drive - Lg Gh22np20 Auaa50b 22x Dvdrw Bare Black
Doesn't matter you can get a DVD drive for a £5 and they are pretty much the same.
Personally, when I finally have the cash to, I want to grab a motherboard that supports ATI Crossfire cards, I mean TWO 512 MB video cards? Who wouldn't want that? Besides ATI is (Hopefully still) a Canadian company, so I'd be helping the local economy... Heh, any excuse to get a killer computer... Unless any of you have heard of problems with the whole crossfire thing. If so, what are they? Hell, by the time I can even afford the damn things there'll be cards 1-2 generations ahead of it at twice the price.
Aside from the fact that unless you game at ultra high resolutions the benefits of both Crossfire and SLi are barely noticeable and that for the cost you'd be better off buying the current gen single card solution rather than buying the two card last gen or two gen old card solution?
