My power supply blown last thursday, so I gave it back to the local PC shop and it happened that in its horrendous death, it took the life of my valliant motherboard (2007 Asus P5K.... RIP)

Upon her still warm body, I swore that her death was not in vain and quickly decided to build a new gaming rig out of its ashes. Here's what I thought about :

- MB : Asus P7P55D

- Proc : Core i5 or i7

- SSD intel as a primary drive

- Win 7 64 bit

- I have already my HDD from my old rig

- RAM : I have already my 2 x 2Go of Patriot DDR2. I might upgrade to DDR3, but I'd like to know if it's possible to couple DDR2 and DDR3 RAM ?

- Graphic card : Radeon HD 5870 , or 2 x Radeon HD 5850

- Dedicated network card 

- Dedicated sound card

My goal is to get stability, speed (with the SSD), and quite good performance. I am looking for a good quality/price ratio, I am not looking for state of the art material ^^ . My budget is not tight, but I don't want to throw money out of the window aswell. I don't know if the Core i7 is really necessary. I really want to try the SSD, and I want a dedicated network in order to get high network performance and a dedicated sound card to avoid crash because of sound issues while playing on my old rig.

PC Fellows of VGC, I need your cunning advice ! Thx !

You may find this web site helpful:

http://www.hardware-revolution.com/computer-systems/gaming-pc/

You have to use DDR3 with P55.

With the CPU, look at some AMD alternatives too. If your application/game prefers more cores to more core speed, the AMD six-cores are good value. Otherwise I'd say i5 760 or X4 965. No need to go higher unless you have something specific in mind.

WIth graphics, I would wait for the Radeon 6xxx series which will launch starting from late October.

Do you really need the network/sound card? The integrated stuff for that should be good enough.

It depends really on when you want to build. If you're willing to wait about a month you can go for the latest graphics card. So if you can answer the timing question we can get on with helping you.

It would help to know what you plan to use the computer for, and what games you'll be playing with it.

Thanks for the quick answers guys

- @ Soleron : My old 8800 GTS was running games like Crysis, Dragon Age,The Witcher,  Mass effect, Batman AA and Stalker really fine on a 1280x1024 monitor.6 months ago, I bought a fine LED LCD 32" TV for 1920*1080 resolution, and it appears some games really suffered from this upgrade, especially Dragon Age because I had to lower the resolution and change some settings, while ME2 was perfectly fine on relatively high settings.  On the other hand, I got lately Oblivion through Steam but I never managed to play more than 5 mn because it crashed whatever the settings/resolution.

- The dedicated network/sound card goal is mostly enhance performance and add stability to the whole rig.  My old Asus P5K had a built in WiFi that I never managed to run correctly. Not that I wanted to connect wirelessly, but sometimes it would have come in handy for me (I used to move quite a lot because of my work :/, and might have to once again in a year or two). Again, I happened to get some crash on some games because of sound issues, thus my decision to try the dedicated sound card

- I am not really wanting to wait more and I will see on Saturday to keep on talking with the computer shop guys for my new rig ^^ and usually I prefer to wait for feedback and tests and so on before to buy brand new material. On the other hand, it could be a good idea to think about the future and the adaptability ot the MB for the next generation of graphic card.

- @ smidlee : Awesome site, lots of good ideas. o7

- Any advice/feedback about the SSD ?

Your based in the UK so I would suggest you visit www.ebuyer.co.uk they have the a Kingston 64GB SSD drive going for £75 delivered (Correction price has gone up £5 since yeasterday). That is a lot cheaper than the Intel version you probably looked at and seems to have very positive reviews.

Good quality PSU should be on your list for starters and heck make it a quiet one. Also definately 64 bit Windows 7 with the SSD as the boot drive and maybe a 1TB HDD as your data source and lots of fast ram. I would probably try and snag a MOBO for Intel that supports USB 3.0 if it has that it will probably mean it has everything else you need. I think the I5 760 would be a good choice and stuff it full of RAM. I would settle with the onboard sound card and maybe a Radeon 5xxx depending on your gaming needs or the new R6xxx models if you need some bragging rights. I like my rigs quiet so I would look at something like the Antec's for my case with plenty of adjustable big (120cm) fans to tackle the heat issues on hot days or if you go down the overclocking route. I only really need to turn my fans up when the ambient temperature is warm and I am pushing the CPU in sustained use. Unless you are a qualified plumber avoid water cooling (Someones water cooler always ends up pouring its coolant over the floor at LAN parties).

This is almost perfect build.

For cpu get i5 760 - as far as gaming is concerned hyper threading is not worth it.

But you need to change memory as all new mobos only accept DDR3.

I'd suggest gskill eco cl7 1600 2x2 GB

GPU: get single radeon 5870 this will be enough for any game (unless you run 30" monitor or 3 displays in eyefinity setup) , 2x5850 is overkill and dual gpu solutions are still not perfect.

Don't forget to get proper cooling for cpu - Zalman Performa/Quiet offers nice performance and comes bundled with one of best TIMs you can get.

As for PSU: If you don't mind spending premium for highest quality I'd suggest Corsair HX750/850, Corsair AX750/850, Seasonic X-650/750. 

I have the CORSAIR MEMORY 650W TX  PSU and it was a solid replacement (very quiet), I also choose the R5770 because I am a cheap arse. If you go for the bigger cards you may want to consider the 750 version for the PSU as suggested in the post above.