A New Hope (dashed)

I never finished the ruminations on the CPU - it's almost certain to be the Q6600, on the basis that I won't be getting another one for a while and until I do I want some flexibility. The quad core can be overclocked to take it past the performance of the E6850, and costs virtually the same. More applications will come on line that take advantage of the multiple cores, so there's little to be gained from restricting things to just two.

However, the bad news - I'm seeing lots of reports of the Asus P5K Premium having install and boot problems with Vista, and maybe even XP, all down to SATA issues. May not be the way to go :-( On the other hand, the P5K-E doesn't seem to have the same hangups, and does most of the same for less money.

A New Hope (Part 1, not IV)

'Bout time for a new PC. I was surprise to figure out that it is still feasible to build something (including operating system) for a few pounds short of what the box shifters would charge - at least when you're considering something above the very basic level.

So this is the chronicle of my new PC, a PC yet to come, but which will be born somewhere on these pages.

Right now, I'm in the throes of trying to work out the architecture and components. Some bits are fairly easy to figure out - I want a 8800GT graphics card: if this doesn't give the best bang-per-buck, then I've been mis-reading an awful lot of reviews. OK, they aren't exactly thick on the ground yet, with price premiums reflecting their scarcity, but in two months' time I expect to be able to pick something up.

In the meantime, I haven't even decided on a CPU, motherboard or case yet. This series of notes will start with the CPU and motherboard, I think - cases will have to wait.

Which way to go? One decision which was relatively easy is that it will be a dual core Intel CPU. There's no point in looking at the top of the range quad core units - I don't have £500 to spend - but neither do I want a chip that simply isn't going to be up to the job. The system will be expected to crunch numbers, roam the Internet, process graphics, and perhaps play a few games (hence the 8800GT). So will it be a E6850 or a Q6600? We'll have to see. The E6750 is a bit of an outsider, though I did debate getting this to tide things over and move on to a Penryn chip next year.

As for motherboards to support this, I don't need SLI, thus knocking out a swathe of Nvidia chipsets straightaway. Another easy decision was to go for DDR2: it may not have the performance potential of DDR3, but neither does it have the undoubted cost premium of the newer format.

OK, P35 or X38? Another good question. Since gaming and overclocking are not primary concerns, I may be better sticking with the former chipset. It's more mature and seems to have a slight price advantage at the moment. It's also easier to get hold of better specced boards as well.

Given all the above constraints, the current frontrunner is an Asus board, the P5K Premium/wifi unit. Lots of nice bits to play with, some overclocking potential if I do want to go down that road, and built in wifi which would help remove some of the wires in the room. However, I've changed my mind at least four times in the last week, so we'll have to see what happens now. One minor point against the Asus is that it doesn't seem to be widely available, at least from reputable dealers at a reasonable price. Still, there's time.