[Ferguslea]

Hi guys
I was kind of hoping that some of you might be able to help me with my dilemma.

My computer died yesterday, I miss her so much, almost 8 good years but despite upgrades, defrags, virus and spyware sweeps yesterday she suffered a massive power failure and could not be revived!

Her motherboard wasn't capable of taking a pci express graphics update so in the end it was as well to let her go.

Now this couldn't have happened at a worse time financially cause I'm on short time right now but I need a computer to be able to work at all.

I have found what appears to be a very good value rig and wondered what you guys thought, bear in mind I have a max budget of £380. (This costs £371)

Ok this comes with no operating system, monitor mouse or anything its just the tower which is OK cause I have everything else.

Case: Silver X Blade ATX Case with 450w PSU 4 Bay with Front Audio and USB
Dimensions: Length - 440mm, Width - 200mm, Height - 430mm
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 2.66ghz 1333Mhz 6mb Cache SKT775
Processor Interface : SKT 775
CPU Cooler : Intel Retail Boxed
Memory: Major Brand 4gb DDR2 800 PC6400 CL6.0 Memory Module
Hard Drive: Branded 500gb Sata 7200rpm 16mb Cache HDD
Graphics Card: Nvidia 9500GT 1024mb DDR2 Graphics Card + VGA + DVI + HDMI
Motherboard: Asrock G31M-GS 1333fsb Intel G31 Chipset S/V/L M-ATX SKT775
Max Memory Support: 8gb DDR2 800
Motherboard Expansion Slots: 1x PCI-E 16x, 1x PCI-E 1x, 2x 32-bit PCI
Network Card: 10/100/1000 Realtek RTL8111DL
Audio: 5.1 CH Windows Vista Premium Level HD Audio (Realtek ALC662 Audio Codec)
Optical Drive: 20x Lightscribe DVD Writer with Buffer Underrun Protection
Power Supply: Branded 450w 24Pin Power Supply Unit
Special Features:
Case gives good air flow to the components.
We use only quality branded products.
All systems come with all the driver CD's.
Unique Chassis design.

Processor seems good as does the 4 gig ram, my only concern is the graphics card which seems pretty naff, it has a gig of onboard but without the horsepower to push it I doubt if that will make a massive difference.

I have an unused Geforce 6600 512 graphics card which I could slip in (I bought it to upgrade my old pc and that's when I discovered it didn't take pci), so I guess my question is, which card will perform better do you think, for games like half life 2?

Thanks in anticipation and healthy regards,
Brian.

[MasterSteve]

That's a very good value for what the computer has. I would say the specs are good for just about any task, especially gaming and video editing! As for the graphics card, I'd go with the 6600