Specification for your perusal

[Fortysixter_UK]

A spec for your perusal:-

This is a setup purely for gaming, nothing else.
( Warcraft, Age of Conan, Rift, most of the popular Steam releases, RTS games, lots of shooters and RPGs, essentially, games from the last decade until now )
I have much cheaper PCs for the day to day dross of life

Whilst I have opted for Win xp ( for max compatibility with my games Library) I have also opted for 6GB of Memory ( for the inevitable Win7 upgrade one day , but there's no rush for this), as I figure if I buy the memory now, its all "matching" and should cause no upgrade issues.

I have gone for the Coolermaster Cosmos as I want cool but quiet. Your opinions on this case would be appreciated, I have very long,( 8-12 hour ) very regular gaming sessions ( 2-3 times a week )
Total £1826.00 ( note max budget £2000.00 )




Case
COOLERMASTER COSMOS 1000 SILVER SILENT CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-950 (3.06GHz) 4.8GTs/8MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® P6X58D-E: DDR3, USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB/s, 3-Way SLI
Memory (RAM)
6GB SAMSUNG DDR3 TRI-DDR3 1333MHz (3 X 2GB)
Graphics Card
1536MB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX580 - 2 DVI,mHDMI - DirectX® 11, 3D Vision Ready
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
120GB Intel® X25-M 2.5" SSD (34nm / upto 250MB/sR | 100MB/sW)***SPECIAL***
2nd Hard Disk
2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
RAID
NONE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
2nd DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM ( simple redundancy precaution here )
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply
800W Quiet 80 PLUS Quad Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£79)
Processor Cooling
COOLIT ECO A.L.C (ADVANCED LIQUID COOLER) (£59)
Sound Card
Sound Blaster® Audigy™ SE (£19)
Network Facilities
Bigfoot Killer 2100 PCI-E Gigabit LAN Card - Max Performance Online Gaming (£69)
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Modem
NONE, I WILL BE USING BROADBAND
Floppy Disk Drive
NONE
Firewire & Video Editing
NONE
TV Card
NONE
Operating System
Genuine Windows XP™ Home + SP3, CD & Licence (£88)
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
KASPERSKY ANTI-VIRUS 2010 - 1 Year Licence for 1 PC (£9)

 

[Rakk]

The vast majority of games will run with absoutely no problem what-so-ever on Win7, so you really might want to reconsider that, especially since Win7 home edition is cheaper than XP

 

[Meds]

Hey,

The specification on a whole looks good although there are a few suggestions which I'd like you to consider;

- 800W PSU would be the minimum I'd recommend for a GTX580, especially if you might be tempted to add another in Sli sometime in the future. I'd consider the 1010W, Corsair TX850 or even the HX1000 if you can squeeze it into your budget.

- By ordering Windows XP, you are holding back the performance of the PC and writing off certain features such as DX11. I have been running Windows 7 HP 64bit since release and I'm yet to experience a problem with my games. In fact my missus wanted to play Theme Park & Theme Hospital from the 90's and after a few tweaks even these run ok!

- People say the BigFoot LAN Card isn't worth the money. I've never used one myself so cannot comment from experience, but from reading reviews I'd rather spend the money on a better PSU.

 

[Fortysixter_UK]

This is exactly the kind of valuable info I am after.
I'll look into dropping the network card in favour of a larger power supply.

Still not all together convinced Win 7 64 bit can run everything.
Anyone on ths forum running the following games under win 7- 64 bit ?

WOW, Age of Conan, Rift beta, Steam titles, Command and Conquer series ?

 

[Tom DWC]

The vast majority of games will run with absolutely no problem what-so-ever on Win7, so you really might want to reconsider that, especially since Win7 Home edition is cheaper than XP.

This 100%.

I've yet to find a game I couldn't get working (admittedly, some did require a few tweaks but we can always help you out there) and as Meds said XP would be unable to take full advantage of your hardware which would be a real shame. Also bear in mind Microsoft will cease support for XP in mid 2014.

 

[Meds]

I've played WoW, Rift BETA, Steam Titles (inc old CSS, TF, HL1 & HL2) with no issues so far. I played Age of Connan on Windows Vista so I'm certain it will run on Windows 7.

 

[BAD SANTA]

you can install the game then just change the compatibility by right clicking on the exe going to properties select run game in xp mode and set run as administrator that should get any xp game working.
I would seriously get windows 7 and do that.