Building new rig - thoughts please

[benwiggy]

Proposed new rig:

CPU - Intel Core i7 860 2.80GHz (Nehalem) (Socket LGA1156)
Motherboard - Asus P7P55D Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3
RAM - 4GB Corsair XMS3 1600MHz CAS9
GPU - HIS ATI Radeon HD 5830 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card *Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Edition*
HD1 - OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive
HD2 - Samsung SpinPoint F3 Desktop Class 1 TB Internal hard drive - 300 MBps - 7200 rpm

Need for word processing (Word, Powerpoint, Excel) and some gaming too.

Not needed for anything high end like video encoding, but would like to be able to run all current games on high settings without issues.

Will run windows 7 on the primary drive, and ghost the drive too.

Would in particular like thoughts if you think I'm over/under spending on some parts

Also how powerful a PSU do I need?

Thanks,
Ben

[orbrit]

A couple comments: the P7P55D-E LGA gives you USB3 and SATA6.0 for future proofing.

I'd recommend a 550w PSU like the Corsair 550VX.
I'd step down the processor to the i5-750. Or even a faster dual core. It doesn't sound like you'll take advantage of the quad core 860.

[David M]

If money is tight, then bump your graphics card up a notch and your CPU down a notch to an i-5. The 5830 is still in medium settings territory for some of the the newest graphics intensive games. This is especially true if you have a high resolution monitor. The last two digits designate the amount of video RAM which matters for high res monitors.

I would get the Corsair 650TX so you have a little more wiggle room above the bare minimum required PSU or if you ever want to upgrade to a more powerful graphics card in the future. There is a $10 price difference from the 550 on Newegg.

If you have games that can utilize hyperthreading and you want this, then get an i-7 860.

Get Win7 64 bit so you can utilize all 4 megs of RAM. Be certain it is DDR3 dual channel RAM.

[benwiggy]

Given it's an extra £45 from i5 670 3.46GHz to i7 860 2.80GHz (Nehalem) isn't that a sensible price to pay for Quad - so that the PC can take advantage of 4 cores?

Also it's another £100 for the ATI 5870.. worth it?

[glc]

The ATI 5830 is an excellent performer for the money. My only comment would be a recommendation to replace that Samsung drive with a WD Black.

I'd get a power supply that's at least 500 watts from Antec, Corsair, or Seasonic.