Building new PC, need advice

My PC has gone tits up and I ain’t spending money on repairing it only to have some other component go bust next week so i’m going to buy a whole new rig. One of the perks of my new job is that I can order PC components VAT free from the company we use so i’m thinking it would be a good idea to order all the bits form there and build it myself. The trouble is that i’m not sure what to buy.

My idea is to buy the essentials all at once and then buy the gfx card and soundcard later when I have more money. Any advice would be greatly appreciated on which components to buy. This is the setup I am currently thinking of getting, does anybody see any problems with this or advise changing anything?

Motherboard:
MSI 975X Platinum Power Up Edition - £107.04

RAM:
Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-6400C4D - £192.06

CPU:
Intel Core 2 Duo - 2.4GHz - £184.25

PSU:
550W CoolerMaster Real Power - £60.95

Case:
Coolermaster Mystique 631 Black - £69.95

DVD Drive:
LiteOn LH-18A1P-487C DVD Writer - £20.34

HDD:
250GB Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS - £43.64

Total: £678.23

Unless you can salvage a PCI-E graphics card from your current PC, it will be a necessary component.

Won’t the motherboard have onboard graphics and sound that I can put up with for now?

I dunno, read the specs. Whether you need a graphics card depends on whether you’re playing newish 3D games, if so you need a good 3D card like a NVida GeForce 7600GT.

Audio yes (and ethernet) but the page you linked to for the mobo does not indicate onboard graphics.

Some mobos have onboard audio, video and ethernet. some audio and ethernet. some none. some one or the other. This one does not have video.

Eventually I am planning on putting a GeForce 8800GTX into it but I guess I could put a cheap card in for now until I can afford the 8800.

While I appreciate your not wanting to put money into your old computer, you’re also losing money by buying a high-end CPU now without a graphics card capable of taking advantage of it. If you can fix your current computer fairly cheaply, I’d consider waiting to buy a new computer until you can get everything all at once.

Also, you may consider getting an E6400 instead of the E6600 – I just bought an E6400 which easily overclocked to 3.2 GHz. If you’re not going to overclock, I think you can use cheaper ram than what you have – you only need PC6400 if you’re going to overclock.

I’ll just echo what Giraffe and ZipperJJ said. No video on your motherboard. You can get an ATI or NVidia card in the £100 range. You can save ££ by stepping down your processor and RAM. Performance RAM is usually a very poor price/performance payoff. Are bragging rights worth not having the computer?