lol killergran

you get used to the noise and leds. not hard to sleep.

The HSF that comes with the CPU is sufficient, unless you plan to overclock.

Even then, stock HSFs can handle mild OCing if you replace the stock thermal goop with some nice Arctic Cooling paste. I did just that and my Athlon II x3 435 at stock tops out at 36C under full load.

Anyway, I see that someone's already directed you to my thread, but at 1680x1050 I'd highly recommend going with the AMD sweet spot (Athlon II x3 440) plus a Radeon 4850. Those two parts are dirt-cheap, costing less than $200USD together here in the States (not sure about AU$), and will be able to handle most anything at 1680x1050. Then just upgrade the card to mid-range again in 1.5-2 years. For the rest of the parts, just look at the recommendations in my thread.

He did say he wanted the card to last a few years (unlikely as that is whatever you choose), and implied that he's considering a 1920 res later on.

In that case, a Radeon 5770 wouldn't be a bad choice, and will allow him to rock games at 1680x1050 before he upgrades the monitor. No modern video card is going to last more than two years before being outperformed by a mid-range option (okay, maybe the 5870/5970 will if they don't give up the magic smoke right after the warranty runs, but there's never any point in spending that much dough on a video card). But at the very least the 5770 should stretch to three years if you overclock it and don't mind compromising on graphics settings in the latter half of its lifetime.

Yeah, OK. 5770 then, and save the money for a mid-life upgrade of the same amount.

The brand of Ram doesn't matter, DDR3 1666 might be a good bet for speed.

The silverstone RV02 is a fine looking case. But it has some drawbacks with cable management as the cables come out the top of the chassis. The Antec P183 is a good looking, professional looking case which has good sound dampening.

In any case, you ought to just pick whichever case looks sturdy and good to you. They are pretty individual and its a personal decision. A better case is easier to install into but practicallly any case you could choose will work. Just make sure its a tower design.

Oh yeah get rid of the HSF, just use stock.

Thanks very much guys. I'll let you know how I go, I'll probably make my purchase in the next couple of weeks. Feel free to offer any additional advice.

Hey guys,
I just wanted to say thanks to all the guys in this thread for their advice and help. I ended up buying the computer parts from Gocomp, which as it turns out is less than 1km from my house.

I settled on an i5 750, P55A UD3 motherboard, 4 gigs of Corsair RAM, an XFX 5850, a Samsung XL 2370 monitor and the Antec p183 which looks much better in person than in pictures and runs damn near silent;) Was a little bit of a pain in the ass putting it all together, but it was worth it in the end.

Cheers guys