Ah... I hoped that was the case. Excellent, I'll leave it a day or so to see if anyone contradicts your theory, and if they don't, I'll get me that slab of goodness and begin my constructing.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Hi - I'm just about to order the parts for my first pc build, but I have one question. The case I really badly absolutley must have states it accepts motherboards 'Up to 12" x 13" E-ATX' - and the mboard I was thinking of getting is a standard ATX. Will a standard ATX mboard fit in a E-ATX case???

The case I'm talking about is this one: Lian Li A70B

Many thanks if anyone can answer this.

ooops, sorry, your right. he said if i can afford it, get the first one, if not then get the second one. i'll have to go over all the prices when i'm not so sleepy and see which suits my budget best, but i think i can afford it, so it looks like the first one.

very pleased to hear you agree with those suggestions though, makes life so much easier when people agree on stuff.

if anyone's interested, a very kind pc expert from another forum suggested i get these components, after studying my pc's stats.....

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-192-IN

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-100-GI

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-090-CR

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-157-IN

seems like i need a lot of stuff, the power supply is on top of all that lot. so that's FIVE new bits i need to buy.....scheesh, this is going to sting when i get the bill.

[edit] oh my god, i just read that last post. i even have to re-install windows. this really is going to be a big spikey pill to swallow. no pain....no gain....bring it on.

gonna sign off to sleep now as it's 4.15 in the morning, but keep the comments coming, and i'll back soon to see what's what.

Don't have any idea what this means: 'PSU is ATX? Don't some Dell's have a BTX mobo, which would require a different PSU?'

so i'll just pretend i didn't read that little nugget of confusion.

to clarify, i am going to be upgrading the whole lot, minus the graphics card, because that seems okay. i wanted to do this bit by bit, starting with the power supply, and going on to the motherboard, cpu and ram, but i've been told that after i've done the power supply, all the next 3 things have to be done at once, because of compatibility issues with power usage and formats and stuff, so this might change your opinion of what power supply i should get.

these are the places i'll probably be looking to buy it from.... so if you stick any links to products, could you please see if you can find them on here?

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/

or

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/index.php

please.

thanks for all your help by the way.

The message i'm hearing is that i want a Corsair 450 or 550.

There's only 10 bucks difference, so i'm tempted to go for the bigger shinier one. As I live in the u.k. should i source this locally, or buy it from the u.s. links that you provided?

ah... now i'm getting confused again. unfortunatley, i know as much about the insides of a pc, as a worm knows about the international space station. therefore i listen to you guys, the experts of this stuff. but when you all disagree and send conflicting suggestions, my tiny brain seizes up and over-heats.

is there any chance someone could make it idiot-proof for me, by posting a link for a device that will do the job, and make my funbox do pretty things?

something future-proof would obviously be an advantage. but as long as it does the job, and doesn't cost silly money, i'm not fussy.