I'm going to build my own gaming PC after i finish my GCSEs. I don't know much about computers so advice is welcome. My budget is around £600-£700 and I'm thinking about using these components.

Motherboard:Asus P5Q, iP45, S 775, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), DDR2 1200/1066/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX £76.25

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo, E7200, Wolfdale Core, S775, 2.53 GHz, 1066MHz, Retail £77.30

Memory: 2GB (2x1GB) Corsair TwinX DDR2 XMS2 Dominator, PC2-8500 (1066), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5 £40.75

PSU: 500W FSP Blue storm II PSU 80% Efficiency £58.62

Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro - P4 up to 4.4GHz - S775 Dual/Quad Core Ready - The Favourite One! £15.26

Case: Coolermaster RC-331 Elite Black/Silver Midi Tower Case w/o PSU £29.99

GFX Card: 512MB Gigabyte HD 4850, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), 1986 MHz GDDR3, GPU 625 MHz, 800 Cores, 2 x DL DVI-I, HDTV £115.14

HDD: 500 GB Hitachi Deskstar 7K500, SATA 300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.5 ms, NCQ £41.00

Optical Drive: LG GGC-H20L Lightscribe SATA 16xDVD±R, +RWx8/-RW x6 Also READS Blu-Ray/HD Discs black OEM (Inc Soft) £67.79

Altogether that's £531.61 excl delivery. I think that's a pretty good spec for the price, I will attempt to overclock my C2D 2.5Ghz to 3Ghz so I'm not bottlenecking my card. If anyone doesn't have a suggestion then I will be buying and building this comp in July next year

That's a very nice spec, and would serve you well. I would go for more RAM at 800MHz personally, though. Also, don't forget an OS if you need one.

However...

July next year... Everything will have changed by then, so there's no point planning this far in advance. 3 months is usually the max planning time, and you have to take into account what will be released in that time.

For example - Since this time last year we're had 2 generations of graphics cards, most CPUs have halved in price, there have been multiple new motherboard chipsets and HDDs have plummeted in price.

By this time next year we will have the new mainstream Core i7s (Nahalem) and a new series of graphics cards, probably. Also all associated price drops and motherboard chipsets.

if the price goes down on this spec then it'll be probably £300 or something which will be pretty good and very affordable, but im gonna buy another laptop for uni so i have to make sure that it doesnt go over budget

Well some of those parts won't be available next year because they get replaced, and it's generally a good idea to think about what you're building knowing the market at the time of purchase.

For the spec of the PC, I wouldn't worry about upcoming future technology. You have to take the plunge at some point.

I think that 2GB of 1066MHz DDR2 is nice but I have had problems with 1066MHz modules in the past as they are not native 1066MHz, they are overclocked from 800MHz and you may find that you have problems. I did and that was on a high end 680i motherboard.

For the same money or a little more you may be able to get 4GB of 800MHz and this is likely to be much more reliable. 2GB is fine for Windows XP but 4GB is the sweet spot for Vista, and 8GB will just slow you down.

The price of everything drops and since you aren't going for the best of the best, you lose less percentage wise compared to someone buying enthusiast hardware like I have just done... I am fully expecting the price of my graphics card to drop by £50 within a month.

Mainstream i7 will not be out until Q3 2009 at the earliest and it is likely to still be expensive then. They will naturally be more expensive because the chips used are larger, and they also use a larger (different) socket on the motherboard, which adds complexity, additional layers etc. and increases costs. You should expect to pay the same again on a new motherboard, processor and triple channel DDR3 memory in one years time.

However, you can overclock the nuts out of that processor and that should see you through the next couple of years no problem. A quick calculation shows that by increasing the FSB from 1066 to 1333 you will get 3167MHz. This processor has a 9.5x multiplier which is really good. It only has 3MB of L2 cache though but I don't think that will hold you back too much. Anyway, you'll save yourself a load of money by overclocking.

Aaron, the reason I was on about future hardware is because he is not planning on doing this until July next year, which, in my books, generally means you should wait to plan it.

Good thinking. I would wait.

will xp be really outdated by summer 2009? it is already starting to look old to me and i prefer vista's interface. if im getting the 800mhz memory i will probably get 3gb so it can use all of it. if quad core goes down to about £70 like the wolfdale core right now then im going to get the 65nm version kentsfield instead of the wolfdale c2d.

XP is old now. Vista is pretty good, they've fixed most the bugs. I'd get the 64bit home premium version, and 4GB 2x2GB matched pair (3GB is a bit pointless as you would need to mix an match, which would cost more). I think 32bit has had the memory acessing problem solved with SP1, but I'm not sure.

Quad cores will be quite cheap next year (probably current dual core level).

what kind of spec would score 5.9 on everythig in vista? i want to make a machine that scores at least 5.0

Pretty much any modern computer will. Vista really needs updating.

A quad core + 4GB RAM + modern graphics will almost certainly get 5.9, unless you use an old IDE HDD.

so a q6600,4gb ram, ati radeon hd 4850, 400gb SATA hdd would score 5.9?

I'm pretty sure it would.

Ok here are my revised specs for my system ( this takes into account the price reductions by summer next year):

Intel Core2Quad Q6600 2.4ghz
4GB (2x2GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2
512MB Gigabyte HD4870
Coolermaster Elite RV-330 V2 ( I like this better than the other one )
same psu,cooler,etc.
my dad just picked me up a 320gb hdd from work so i can use that. it was a sample hdd anyway assuming it wont be used

Fairly decent, though there will almost certainly be a new graphics card series by then, as graphics change the quickest, so I wouldn't bother specifying a graphics card.

I got a good deal on my pc for like £340 but then my dad got an uber leet one for £325 and i was all, OMFG YOU NUB U USE YOUR PC FOR DOWNLOADING FILMS AND CONVERTING THEM IM A GAMER Y UR PC BETTER!!!!!

and its case is ded sexy

whats the best case i can get for £50?
whats ur pc's spec

Case for £50? There's quite a few nice ones in that price range. Just make sure it has dual 120mm fans and no silly features and you should be good. Just go for a case you like the look of.

there are a lot of brands for cases and i dont want to take all day going through all of them,
plz can u list the good case brands?

Akasa and Coolermaster make good cases, some of which are cheap. Lian-li arguably make the best cases, but not under £50, I don't think. Jeantech have some nice ones aswell.

should i use crucial ballistix ram or ocz 1066mhz ram? both are ddr2

I have used OCZ twice before and they have always been (as their name suggests) highly overclockable, very stable, and they run quite cool also. Crucial seem to be a bit too pricey.

I would go for whatevers cheaper. Also, 800MHz stuff is considerably cheaper, and I beleive CPU FSB is quad pumped and RAM is only dual pumped, meaning that 800MHz RAM allows for 1600MHz CPU.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Aaron, I have no experience with DDR2 and Core CPUs.

You're right.

Ah, that's good Means I can go up to 3.6GHz on a Q6600 with the RAM I want, which is plenty!