Thought for a long time - read lots of reviews of the parts - want something powerful with a bit of future proofing for good measure - happy to pay for some quality - so this is the list as it stands right now - any thoughts, comments, constructive ideas or compatability issues?
I have chosen XP for today, have no interest in Vista, but would like to think the system would be able to take on Windows7 whenever that hits the market in a few years time.
Considering future upgrades. Processor - I think it will be a long time before socket 775 chips are no longer able to offer good level of performance. Memory - the mobo offers up to four times more than I propose fitting on day one. Graphics cards are plugins, as are HD's. Can you think of any other upgrade paths I have not considered?
I have no interest in overclocking per se, but do not think I have tended towards that in my choices below, and as such have relied on case fans and retail processor fan for cooling.
Intel core2duo 8400
Corsair 2G of XMS2 Dominator
Graphics card - BFG 9600GT (dual DVI)
Motherboard - Asus P5QL SE
PSU - Corsair HX520W
HD - 250G Western Digital Caviar Blue
Case - Gigabyte Triton180 - just bought that - its a lovely piece of kit.
Keyboard, mouse, screens (I want dual monitors) have yet to be finalised, but I dont think these impact on overall performance quite as much as the 6 items above.
Look forward to your comments, and TIA


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If you bought the E5200 it has a FSB of 200MHz and a multiplier of 12.5 (2.5GHz) in most cases this is plenty fast enough if you fancied 3GHz though you could up the FSB to 240MHz and there you would be with a 3GHz processor for £60 rather than £140 and if the chip will run fast enough you could have a CPU speed of 5GHz before needing to overclock the memory, the only downside to this is the lower amount (2MB) of L2 Cache on the E5200. To counter that you could move to the E7300 (£90, 3MB L2 Cache) this has a FSB of 266 and a multiplier of 10x meaning a 4GHz overclock is possible without overclocking the memory. You will notice little difference in performance from dropping from 6MB L2 Cache to 2MB but the 3MB option is there if you think its important.

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