Hi all, long time listener, first time poster. For the last few months or so I have been looking for a new computer for myself. The reason for this is that my old 1.6Ghz laptop is no longer cutting it and I would like to be able to play my favorite games in their full glory Eg. HL2:Ep2, TF2, TimeShift, Garrys mod, Black Mesa Souce etc. I have been deliberating whether to go i7 or not, recently however my finances have picked up so I have decided to go ahead and I am hoping I can get someone’s professional opinion on the rig as I have never built a pc from scratch before. Most of what I have chosen here is the result of looking at many building guides and the "Hot Products Weekly" section of PConline. I have gone with PConline because on price spy they seem to always have the lowest price and generally is cheaper even with shipping included. However if anyone has a better idea for cheap parts in christchurch I'll be glad to hear them. Here's what I have go so far:
Intel Core i7 920 2.66GHz $460.87
Antec Three Hundred ATX Tower Case $101.98
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R X58 CORE i7 ATX Motherboard $334.95
500W *SilverStone* ST50F 24pin Power Supply $95.72
Corsair TR3X6G1600C8 6GB (3x 2GB) PC-12800 (1600MHz) DDR3 $230.40
Western Digital 32M 500GB SATA 7200RPM Cache $96.80
Lite-On 20X LH-20A6L Lightscribe SATA DVDRW Drive $48.00
Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 896MB DDR3 PCI-E Graphic Card $280.35
BENQ G2220HD 21.5" Full HD LCD Monitor $217.99
OZAKI 3300W 5.1 Speaker for Personal Home Theater $69.00
This all adds up to about $1,932 or $2,173 with gst. This is at the upper end of my budget and I would like to lower the costs without sacrificing too much performance. I am also interested in overclocking, howerver as this seems to be a dangerous I might just leave it until I understand it better. Any help appreciated.