Advice on what parts to buy for a new PC!

I'm not PC tech savy so i haven't got much idea if any of the parts i've chosen are compatible or not so i need some advice and help with that. Also i'm not totally sure what parts are best so i need some help with that aswell lol. My budget is around £850-£900 so if anyone can come up with a better PC build for that budget then please feel free :)

Case: Antec 900 or Coolermaster Stacker STC-T01 or Coolermaster RC-1000

Motherboard: No idea about these to be honest and i guess everything else depends on this one part?

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600

PSU: Coolermaster RealPower 700w Modular SLI Ready

RAM: No idea which make or model but 4GB seems a nice number lol.

HDD: No idea which make or model but a 500GB space would be nice.

GFX Card: XFX 8800GT 512mb is the only one i can think off that gets mentioned a lot on the boards.

CD/DVD Drives: No real idea about which is best.

OS: I dislike Vista but my guess is its probably best to buy Vista as its the newest OS. That being said which version of Vista should i buy?

Well i think i've covered everything but what i've covered i'm unsure and undecided on if its the best for my budget. I basically want a PC i can run most games on high and run the select few games that are demanding with a decent performance. All advice is really welcome and if anyone feels like providing their own build for me to look at then i'd be grateful.

Also i dont intend to overclock anything as i haven't done it before and i dont really see much need to do it personally.

You should probably go with Antec 900 for the case, RC-1000 might be a bit too expensive for your budget. Are you planning to add another GPU later on? 700W is too much if you aren't. This should do for the memory and this for the HDD. DVD drive doesn't really matter much. LG once died on me so I currently have a Samsung.

And I wonder how you dislike Vista if you don't even have it yet ;) You should probably go with 64-bit Home Premium.

You should probably go with Antec 900 for the case, RC-1000 might be a bit too expensive for your budget. Are you planning to add another GPU later on? 700W is too much if you aren't. This should do for the memory and this for the HDD. DVD drive doesn't really matter much. LG once died on me so I currently have a Samsung.

And I wonder how you dislike Vista if you don't even have it yet ;) You should probably go with 64-bit Home Premium.RK-Mara

My experiences with Vista are through using laptops and PC's owned by friends and family so perhaps my negative views are unfounded when i've not used it that much day in day out like i have XP. That being said does Vista 64bit have any conflict issues with games or other popular software, i ask this because when i used to have XP Pro b4bit i could never get anything to install or run properly on it.

Any advice on the motherboard and GPU? I understand the 9 Series is out and was wondering would it be worth investing in one instead of an 8800GT/GTX?

The HD4850 is cheaper and faster than the XFX 8800GT you listed.matrixian

I'll be honest i'm not that familiar with ATI GPU's and have always had a preference for Nvidia since i've never had a problem with their GPU's ever. That being said is there no Nvidia card out there that people would recommend?

I was looking at this card and it seems pretty good?

Well i'm still confused on what parts to get still, infact its times like this that i dislike PC gaming and PC shopping because it can be such a headache. That being said i dislike consoles so here is my choices all i really need now is for people to say yes or no to the parts i've chosen and if no then provide a replacement lol.

Case: Antec900 or Coolermaster Stacker STC-T01

PSU: Coolermaster eXtreme Power 650w

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600

GPU: Sapphire HD 4870 512mb or EVGA 8800GT 512mb

Motherboard: Asus Commando P965 Socket 775 Onboard Audio ATX

HDD: Samsung Spinpoint 500GB SATAII 16mb Cache

RAM: Corsais 4GB DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400

Drive: Samsung SH-S223F 22X DVD?RW/RAM/DL

Notes:

- Can't really decide between those two cases as both seem to be excellent for ventilation and while the Coolermaster is bigger and more expensive it is apparently a lot quieter than the Antec900. I'll be phoning Ebuyer later today to find out more information about the cases, mainly to find out how many fans and which ones they send with each case.

- Chose a 650w PSU because its silent unlike my current 700w PSU and its apparently a little more eco-friendly.

- Again i'm undecided about which GPU is best, i would have chosen a 9 series card but they seem pricey and not much better than the 8800's. Also i'd like to point out i didn't pick that 8800GT because Crysis is included :P!

- I know nothing about Mobo's so i'm hoping that this one is compatible with the other parts i've listed. Also wondering if the sound quality from the onboard audio will be any good? currently using an onboard audio and the sound isn't amazing. I'm hoping for decent sound quality since my PC is my main source of music and i recently got given a kickass speaker system so i want to make use of it.

-Both the HDD and Drive are OEM edition which i take it means they dont come with anything but a box right? If so thenwhat cables or connections will i need to buy to get them connected? I've never bought an OEM version of a drive or HDD before lol.

Please if someone can rate and improve or suggest changes i'd be grateful :)

EDIT - Forgot to mentioned that although isaid i had a budget of £800-£900 i can extend it right up to £1200 if needed i just set myself a low budget incase i decide to maybe buy a bigger monitor :P

go for the ati graphics card this genaration, on ebuyer its only 180 for even the hd 4870 which is absolutly amazing, its fully future proof to and for only 50 pound more than the grahics card there you really can't go wrong and also it takes less power therefore save ya self more money on the psu :)wii60own

FULLY future proof eh? Guess this is the only card he'll need for the rest of his life huh?

[QUOTE="wii60own"]go for the ati graphics card this genaration, on ebuyer its only 180 for even the hd 4870 which is absolutly amazing, its fully future proof to and for only 50 pound more than the grahics card there you really can't go wrong and also it takes less power therefore save ya self more money on the psu :)tequilasunriser

FULLY future proof eh? Guess this is the only card he'll need for the rest of his life huh?

haha well future proof for a least 3 years ;)

As for the 64-bit Vista, there are quite a few problems with firewalls. If you are subscribed to one, you should check first if it supports 64-bit. Other than that, you shouldn't have many problems. There are still few programs that don't want to cooperate but only few. If you are going with Vista, it should definitely be the 64-bit version. The 32-bit version has some strange problems that 64 doesn't.

And go with Radeon 4870 if you can afford it. Like the benchmarks here on GameSpot prove, it's the current graphics card king.

Well i think i have to agree with you there RK-Mara in that from what i've heard 32bit Vista has some weird issues or should i say glitches? Looking through Ebuyer i saw the OEM version of Vista 64bit Home Premium is around £75 which isn't half bad really.

As for cases i phoned up Ebuyer and asked them about the Antec900, Coolermaster Stacker and Coolermaster Cosmos 1000 and they were rather helpful. To cut a long story short the Antec900 has awesome air circulation but is too loud and when everything is installed its a bit of a squeeze apparently. The Coolermaster Stacker doesn't come with the cross flow fan and Ebuyer dont sell that single piece so the ventilation would be really poor so thats no use. The Cosmos 1000 however appears to be a nice middle ground between good ventilation and air circulation while also managing to stay quiet enough to not become annoying. Sadly however their out of Stock and can't say for certain when they'll have new stock in for this case.

Taking a guess at it all i'd say i'm well within my budget of £800 let alone needing to stray into the £1200. That being said a 22" LCD would be nice....

EDIT - Yes i think i will be going for the ATI 4870 as everyone seems to keep mentioning the fact its possibly the best "bang for your buck" at the current moment. That and the woman from Ebuyer recommended it over the 8800 series aswell lol.