Looks GREAT! My only issue would be the AMD/ATI video card. I had always used Nvidia up until I built my current rig...and now I'll never use ATI again. The drivers, frankly, SUCK. Their is no way to reverse letterbox my old games so they all get stretched out. Games are nine times out of ten optimized for Nvidia cards as well so configuring them in game is easier. Its just been more hassle than it has been worth.

Man I'm glad I don't PC game. It only costs me like $400-$450 to replace my pc. And oddly even though I use the cheap budget prebuilt ones I've never actually had one just die on me. I've never even had to have one repaired.

Lifehacker has an article (recently updated), of the components they'd use to build an under-$600 and under-$1200 system. It might be worth looking at for their choices and reasoning:


I haven't had experience with this particular build suggestion, but I generally find their articles to be well-researched and useful.

Steve

I've often been an NVIDIA fan for the last several years, but my graphics drivers crash waaaay more often than they should. So, I don't necessarily think the grass is that much greener on the other side, Kane.

I just bought 2 SSDs a month ago and set them up in a RAID 0 configuration. I spent several days doing benchmarks and comparing it to my HDDs that I had already. Here are the general stats that I got:

1 Seagate 7200 rpm 1.5TB drive on Intel ICH10R controller
Transfer Rate Minimum : 13.8 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 125.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 99.8 MB/sec
Access Time : 13.8 ms

5 Seagate 7200 rpm 1.5TB drives in RAID 5 on Intel ICH10R controller
Transfer Rate Minimum : 54.9 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 473.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 383.8 MB/sec
Access Time : 9.7 ms

4 Seagate 7200 rpm 1.5TB drives in RAID 10 on Intel ICH10R controller
Transfer Rate Minimum : 163.6 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 247.0 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 210.4 MB/sec
Access Time : 11.7 ms

2 Samsung 830 SSD 256GB drives in RAID 0 on Intel ICH10R controller
Transfer Rate Minimum : 512.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 527.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 523.7 MB/sec
Access Time : 0.1 ms

So, yeah, you should see big improvements with that SSD, but a physical HDD can get close in performance--in certain situations.

I'd be a little leery of that SSD you've got listed, though, to be honest. That older generation of Kingston SSDs didn't rate all that high in reviews. I would try to use a site like Tom's Hardware Guide and look at their monthly "Best SSDs for the Money" articles. They break it down by certain price points. They've even got a UK version of the site. Here's a link to the latest article on the their UK site: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/ssd-revie ... 32364.html

I'd be wary of any pc that list FPS as a feature. FPS in which program with which settings?

Also, an 850W power supply is silly. You'll only need a third of that unless you have several hard drives and graphics cards. As you've experienced, you don't want to skimp on the power supply, but raw wattage is not at all a measure of quality.

YAY! My computer is on the delivery van! I like my net book but 1.6 ghz and 0.99 gig of memory is driving me crazy!!

Sigh, just experienced a hard drive failure last night. Might loose all of my files because a few days before, my back-up drive died the replacement hasn't arrived yet, (it's still in warranty).

I'm going out to get a new drive tonight and hopefully once I've installed the new one, I'll be able to coax the old one to life long enough to recover my files.

Ouch! Oh man that really sucks.

Well I got my new system and I'm installing everything now. It is a pain as I don't want programs going to my C drive and many are just being a pill about where I want the software to install.