I've been uhm'ing and ah'ing for a while at what to buy. I bit the bullet the other day and bought my new bits! It's not as expensive and superduper as I planned but it sure does the job!

AMD Phenom x4 Black Edition 2.6Ghz (OC'd to 3.0Ghz)
Asus.... Forgot what number! Tri-SLi available Motherboard
4Gb Corsair 800MHZ Ram
EVGA GeForce 9800GTX+ 'Superclocked' (factory clocked..)

Price? Just short of £500. I already had a case / PSU laying around so didn't need those. I've also used my old HDD so no need for one of those either!

I'm still running XP for now, seen as Windows 7 is just around the corner... May be tempted to 'borrow' Vista 64 Ultimate...

The PC Runs HL2: Ep 2 between 70-230FPS dependant on area, every setting maxed at 1280x1024 Resolution, CS:S at around 150FPS on most levels with 17Bots/1 Player.... I need a bigger monitor!

Just re-installed Company of Heros and will probably play through Crysis again on Max settings rather than low settings! Woo.

Good stuff, nothing better than getting a pile of boxes ful of circuit boards and other cool stuff

Sounds very similar to my setup, only I went for the corsair dominator and 3870 x2 radeon.

£500 seems like a bloody good price!!!

Max everything games FTW!!!

Watch the "weak" core 2 on the Phenom I dropped mine abck down to 2.6x4... lets face it, its hardly slow!

Well, It seems to be doing the job.

I've put Vista 32 Ultimate on the machine now and it whizzing along quite nicely.

Company of Heroes everything (that can be..) set to Ultra / High runs at 35FPS average, Max of 60FPs and Min of 26FPS.

Crysis Runs all High at 25-30FPS, Very High at 10FPS. Think I'll need to SLi to get Crysis to run better.. but then I'd also need a better PSu so there's £250-£300 just for the two things.. That can wait!

Call of Duty 4... Dunno how to get the FPS on that yet.. but it's all maxed and doesn't lag one bit.

Now I just need get my internet sorted out again! Need to update my drivers and install SP1! (Justgot SP1 of a friend, it's saved on my mobile phone atm..)

SLi ideally for Crysis... i can get 58fps with everything set on high, but with antialias backed off a few

COD4 is immense, but that doesnt need SLi, but with it i can get a whopping 80odd, try using the FPS counter in XFire...

What SLi cards are you running? The card I have is £160 then I'd need atleast a 700W PSU as I only have a 500 in there at the mo.

If I go from a 500 to 700 you think the card will perform better without SLi?