Help build me a ~£500 Gaming rig

[master811]

My advice would be, by a cheap little card(maybe a 3850 or even a £50 8600) then buy the 9800GTS when it is released in november @ £200 roughly (350-400$ is rrp).

CPU: if your going c2d id recommend getting the 45nm stuff as they are better and same price now, e8400's are good IF you can find them. Dont pay more then £130 for them. Many people are saying the q6600 will be much more future proof but it depends if your overclocking or not really, a e8400 @ stock will perform better in games then a q6600@stock. If your cautious person like iam(i love my warranties xD) then id say get the e8400, save the 3year warranty and when it becomes a bottleneck in games(years to come) then just overclock it a bit.

Case, antec 900 or p182 or p180 or a coolmasters 690.

Optical drives: do you burn dvds? if no then just buy a dvd combo drive(burns cd and plays dvd), roughly £10-£15, liteon/lg/samsung/pioneer/msi and alot more xD.

Don't touch an 8600, there is much, much better around for the same money. Also where do you get your 9800GTS info from?, I have seen nothing on that. GPU wise, we need to know what monitor you have?

Regarding the E8xxx series, they would be nice to get but they are hard to get hold of at the moment, not to mention the fact as a result, they are more expensive and are not the same price as their replacements currently. Oh and I'm fairly sure Retail Warranties don't cover OCing.

Those cases you mentioned are good but aren't exactly cheap, and would use up a sizeable amount of a £500 budget. The Antec Sonata case mentioned is good a bet though especially as it comes with a more than good enough PSU.

And really you should always get a DVD writer, they are so cheap now, there's only perhaps a few £s difference between them and just a normal combo DVD/CDRW. As an example, I got my Samsung 20x DVDRW (with Lightscribe) for just £16 in December!

[hanster]

I would personally get a e2200 and overclock that as the difference between an overclocked e2200 and q6600 is small if you're gaming, decoding/encoding is a different matter.

With the monty saved (~£80-90) you could get a better gfx card or more memory.