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I've got a Sapphire HD 5770 with 1GB DDR5, getting 20-30 FPS with 10,000 view distance, very high overall quality at 1440x900.

AMD processors come with fans that have thermal paste pre-applied to the bottom. You're all set there.

Your mobo should come with 2 3gb/s and 2 6gb/s SATA cables.

When Installing it,
Remember - static-proof yourself - strap etc.
Consider whether its best to screw the board into the case first, then mount the CPU and memory you'll have to make that judgement yourself, there is never a single answer for that.
Make sure you have your power supply cabling planned out before putting in the motherboard.
Make sure you study the motherboard LED connector part of your manual carefully, if you haven't got an easy mobo solution for this fiddly bit.
Don't worry about any extra thermal compound, use what comes with your CPU.
Make sure you don't leave the plastic peel-off bit on the bottom of your heatsink (mate of mine actually did this, and we have never let him forget it).
Plan where your CPU fan will connect, and ensure that you can get to all the clamps, and fittings on your motherboard.
Powersupply to install before your motherboard.

Last bit of advice, prepare your location carefully for your assembly, tools, lighting, all ready and don't rush anything, or force anything. Aside from a 4-pin power connector very little requires any effort to plug in. And try not to drop any screws in the case

- apologies if all this is obvious to you, but thought it could be useful, as i have been putting PC's together about as long than some people here have been alive

Iceburg wrote:Cheers guys

EDIT* Was in a rush before!

I do want to get a solid state hardive, However to keep the cost down I will buy one in a few weeks/months time once I have read up on them.

20-30fps, How playable is that? I was hoping to get a bit more spending this much cash on a machine

Thanks for all the help guys.

First thing to remember is that your 5850 should be about twice the power of my 5770, so you should get better framerates. 20-30 FPS isn't bad at all from what I've heard, and it's more than playable so far for me.


If you're looking to learn about solid state drives, check out Anand Lai Shimpi's reviews:

This one has great general background, explains how SSDs really work and what that means in terms of their usefulness - The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

This is his review of Crucial's RealSSD C300, it's 64GB version is one of the top performing mid-price SSDs available right now. This compares it to various other drives as well, though he mostly compares the larger memory, more expensive drives, which I imagine you don't want to shell out for. It's just a place to start and see some recent numbers on SSDs really - The SSD Diaries: Crucial's RealSSD C300 - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

JohnnyTheIED wrote:
Like many im opting for the AM3 platform with the best CPU for budgets, Phenom x4 965.

I'm picking up that CPU Friday, probably with an ASUS Crosshair Formula IV mobo....part 1 of my build....and I currently have the P4 2.8 478 AGP system you describe, lol, with an Asrock P4i65G mobo....


Bazza

Iceburg wrote:The trouble I would have is sourcing the components,

Ebuyer.com and dabs.com are both websites i have used to source components and they haven't let me down yet

I can't find any benchmarks on the 5850 2GB, but the difference between the 5850 and the 5870 in this review is ~10 FPS on average. The 2GB 5850 will probably perform slightly above the 1GB, but without increasing processor speed or anything it's not going to jump up near the 5870