Hi there prince. Not a bad setup there, but I would make a few changes. IMO, these are better parts, and will give you better performance. 750w is a little bit much, and would prove to be quite loud out of a PCP&C design.
Newegg.com - ASUS P5Q Pro LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards ------The G31 was never designed for gaming, and will probably give lacklust performance. mATX boards I never recommend for gaming, as you have little room to expand, (literally and figuratively)

Newegg.com - CORSAIR CMPSU-550VX 550W ATX12V V2.2 Power Supply 90 - 264 V UL, CUL, CE, CB, FCC Class B, TUV, CCC, C-tick - Power Supplies

Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE Toxic 100225TXSR Radeon HD 3870 512MB 256-bit GDDR4 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards Recommended over the 8800GTS, the Radeon 3870 is a very good card, and will serve you well. This one runs quiet and cooler than most. If you have slightly deeper pockets I recommend the Visiontek HD 4850, (lol pwnage)

Newegg.com - WINTEC AMPX 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Desktop Memory -----all around good memory, reliable, fast, works.

Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drive
-----one of the fastest harddrives out there, not including hte new WD VelociRaptor. Fast, Big, Quiet, Cool. Not to mention, its Western Digital. I have a bone to pick with seagate, as none of the drives ive ever used from them have been reliable, or quiet. All have died, so now i only use WD.

Wow! Thanks so much for your help. I like the other components you picked out, a lot.

My only other concern, is with the memory and motherboard. Are they compatible? The Motherboard says it takes DDR2 1200, and the RAM says it is DDR2 800. Won't that affect performance? Maybe I'm wrong. Just noticed that and thought I'd ask.

Also, I know this is a hardware section...but do you have any suggestions as to whether I buy XP or Vista? (and which version)

-Prince

AW_3_3 proberly can explain the RAM issue better but the RAM is fine.No issues.I cannot see performance affected there.

Have you ever used Vista before?

If you are going for a 32 bit OS then it would only reconise 3.25 gig RAM.

I love XP but now have Vista.

You have a choice of Vista to install,Vista home premium,vista buisness and vista ultimate.

If you are going to add more RAM in the future lets say another 2 gig I would go for a 64 bit OS.This means all 4 gig would be reconised and utilised.

I have tried home premium and ewwwww mite as well have XP installed.

I have Vista Ultimate 32 bit and 64 bit installed on two seperate computers.Ultimate has a few nicer extras and controls compared to home premium such as Aero.

The choice is yours realy,I would go for Vista to be honest support for XP will not be produced anymore and support will eventualy stop.

Vista is a little harder than XP to use but just play around with it and I am sure you will get used to it.Microsoft has a pritty good Vista help and how to.

I have not however tried Vista Buisness.

Thanks Jelly Bean!

I think I might go with Vista Ultimate 64-bit. If I do this, 4gb of memory is recommended right? If so, do you think this will work well for me?:

Newegg.com - G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Desktop Memory

Anything I'm forgetting?


-Prince

You dont need 4 gig RAM straight away but with your build and I assume you play higher spec games then 4 gig is much better.

Vista Ultimate 32 bit runs very well with 1 gig RAM.
Vista Ultimate 64 bit runs very well with 2 gig RAM.

Although minimum requirements are a lot less but slow machine hence need 2-4 gig.

So 2 gig will do fine and upgrade to a total of 4 gig in time.4 gig will be much better.

The choice of fitting amount of RAM and when I will leave upto you.

That RAM looks fine on your link.

To explain the 1200 and 800 is kind of like your board will take upto 1200 so 800 is fine to fit in there.

I have 4 gig fitted but I dont game I just wanted a nice fast smooth pc and thats what I built.

Vista also before installing SP1 I advise you to fully update all drivers,software,microsoft updates first.

Depends on what your doing. I have several computers (none mine, unfortunately) running Home Premium. I myself would opt for Home Premium 32 bit, just for sake of there not really being any reason for 64 bit. There are very few programs that will run 64bit, there is no 64 bit flash player (so no youtube etc unless you use firefox 32bit).If I were you, I would go for Vista Home Premium 32bit, you can install 4 gigs, and you will be able to use 3.25. However, that other 3/4GB isnt lost, the OS uses it for video memory, and for other things, so its not wasted. And yes your mohterboard will support UP to DDR2 1200, but its really not necessary. DDR2 800 is hte standard, and is plenty fast for all but the highest end machines.
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EDIT> not to mention Home Premium is much cheaper.
for 4GB, i would go with this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145184