Hi everyone. I too will be purchasing a new pc soon and would like your help and advice as to getting it just right. Its primary function is to be able to play the very latest games without breaking too much into a sweat. I also want Vista Ultimate for the Media Centre capabilities but as i won't be needing a monitor or keyboard all my money will be purely for the pc and OS. I don't have unlimited funds but could possibly stretch to £1500 (if i use the kid's college fund. he he, sorry kids). I admit here that i'm not an expert in computers but i do know a bit from reading the forums that things change really quickly in both hardware and software ( i've read somewhere that Microsoft's new OS is going to be called Windows 7) and so any pc that is already assembled could potentially be 'old hat' before it gets to the buyer. I 've found this one that seems to fit the bill nicely but would like your thoughts before i commit to buy. I don't know whether this guy custom makes pc's to order or not but if he does once armed with your suggestions i could always ask him.

any responses are welcome

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Q6600-QUAD-COR...QQcmdZViewItem

As a Dell Value Added Reseller, I get exposure to quite a few different configurations. I set up a system during the summer with one of those quad-core Q6600 processors and it was pretty special - the fastest XP boot time of any PC I've used. It's November now though so you could probably get an even better processor than that for your budget.

I was going to suggest aiming for at least a 512MB graphics card as the target but the one that you've seen on Ebay appears to have a pair of 768MB cards - that's loads of power!

4GB RAM is good. The motherboard supports very fast 800MHz RAM, although it's not clear if that's what you'll be getting. You might only get 533MHz or 667MHz RAM so you'd want to check that.

This system has the potential to be transferring data between components so very quickly that you may find that having a single hard drive causes a bottleneck. I would expect a £1600 desktop to have at least 2 hard disks to reduce this risk. You could either have one hard disk for Windows and another for your games and applications or you could have 2 drives with everything on, set up as an exact replica of each other. This is called RAID 1 and allows data to be read from the second drive when the first drive is busy. Both configurations can increase read speeds under different conditions.

Hope that helps

You might also want to ask why this one appears to be the same spec but is £400 cheaper!!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Q6600-QUAD-COR...QQcmdZViewItem

Do not concern yourself with Windows 7. That's too far down the road and, sadly, hardware and software makers have yet to fully embrace Vista so who knows what will happen to the Win7 timeline.

As for 4Gb, understand that physics limits the maximum amount of RAM ANY 32-bit operating system can address since 2^32 = 4G (that's 2 to the power of 32). That said, hardware overhead cuts into that even more so real world, you can only use about 3Gb on any 32-bit OS system. I say that so you don't panic when you fire up your 4Gb system and only see 3.xGb of RAM - or, since budget is limited, you might consider only getting 3Gb and using the extra cash towards the best video card you can get. Something to think about.

As for the guy that is selling this computer, personally, if I were to buy a PC (that is, not build it myself) I would buy from the actual PC maker, or from an authorized reseller - that is, someone I can deal with if something breaks and/or I need warranty work. This guy appears to be legitimate - make sure he is, and that you understand your warranty conditions before you give them your money.

thanks so much for that guys. i can always rely on the good people here at D.A.L for genuine imput. muchos gracias amigos.

¡De nada!