Help me design the ?1000 quake wars BEAST

[Link]

So quake wars is coming. So is my annual bonus. What a terrible thing, I have a great excuse to buy a new PC, as well as the money to do so. At the end of the month, I will be buying and building, so between now and then I need to decide what I will be buying and building.

I have thrown together a quick list, as seen here. Now I'm looking for suggestions as to where I can improve/save.

I would like DX10, I know the current card on there isn't, so suggestions for that would be good.
It dosen't have to be exactly ?1000, under is fine, and a bit more is ok.
Got to be UK retailers, but not nessesrilly the same one, although it would be nice.

I'll update this post and the spreadsheet as I go.

 

[Barney Fife]

AMD just made massive price cuts yesterday and Intel will most likely match it up. I'll STRONGLY advice you to wait and not do the same mistake I did. We can start talking about it though.

BRB.

 

[The Brick]

IMO the Raptor disk is a waste of money. The latest 7200rpm drives outperform it in some cases, and in general the difference is not that great (non existant for gaming). So I suggest you keep that money and get a cheat sata drive for the primary disk.

Atm the best DX10 deal is the 8800GTS 320mb. It's a great card for the price, but ATI is coming with its new DX10 cards really soon, so I really suggest you wait it out. And I agree with Barney five.

What also is a critical point: do you plan on overclocking a lot?

 

[Link]

I tend to ignore waiting for the next thing that's "just round the corner", such as price cuts or new things due out, because there is always something to wait for. I find its best to just get what's available once you have the funds to buy and accept its going to be out of date before its delivered

I will prob overclock a little, but I have not tried it much before, so I'm not going to be going for mad overclocks

As to the raptor, I know its not going to make a huge difference, but as far as I know, it will give faster level loading than any 7,200 RPM drive out there. If you know of a 7,200 thats as fast and cheaper, then great. I know its a bit of a luxury item, but I hate long loads with a passion

 

[The Brick]

We're being serious, waiting really is the best thing to do, especially if you're looking for a good DX10 card deal.


As for the raptor, you're gonna waste money if you want to lower load times.
http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q3/wd-500s/index.x?pg=5

 

[Barney Fife]

We're talking about $100-$200 savings kind of wait. I just lost $130 (Though Newegg agreed to send me goodies) on my 5600+ because I couldn't wait for 20 days.
Not the DX10 ATI cards, but the C2D E6700 for 100-200 dollars less, wouldn't be nice?.
If you hate waiting seconds with passion then go for the 10K HDD. The video cards I'm suggesting the 640MB GTS cards and nice stable overclockable MB like the NF680i or NF590 SLI boards with full speed x16 by x16 SLI mode with support C2D and Quad-core chips socket AM2 would be nice.
Yes I have very expensive taste.

Good Luck.

 

[Asus]

As for the raptor, you're gonna waste money if you want to lower load times.
http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q3/wd-500s/index.x?pg=5

Keep in mind that the newest 74GB Raptor version (WD740ADFD - red bar) is a good improvement over the original which I have (WD740GD - green bar). In just a few benchmarks my new WD 500GB RE2 drive is faster than my old raptor but it is newer than the old raptor. The new raptor is a nice improvement.

Whether it's worth the price is going to be up to you. (The old one was worth it to me when compared to hard drives of it's time and fit within my budget.)

 

[3ssence]

I have one of the newer 74gb Raptor's and a 250gb Deskstar as my OS and applications drive. The Raptor is certainly quick when it comes to loading, but as has been stated, recent 7200rpm drives are pretty close performance wise. I'm certainly happy with the Raptor, however i'm not sure it's really worth the price, unless you really are bothered by that couple of seconds difference it may make.