What Hardware Should I Buy? - Dec 2008

Memory

First Choice: Corsair XMS2 4GB kit (2x2GB) PC2-6400 CAS5
UK Pricing: £37.54 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $54.99 (ex. Tax)

The bare minimum of memory you should be putting into a high-end PC is 4GB, especially as the performance advantage is fairly significant over 2GB. This 800MHz/PC2-6400 kit from Corsair is fantastically priced at below £40 and is pre-fitted with Corsair’s XMS2 heatspreaders allowing you to push your RAM that little bit faster if you wish, although you won’t be able to rival premium memory performance.

Just remember that you’ll need a 64-bit operating system like Vista Home Premium x64 to take advantage of more than 4GB of system memory. If you can stretch a little more - PC2-8500 modules will give you some more headroom but will typically cost £62.85 for some vanilla Nanya with no heat spreaders, or to get more elaborate again you'll be looking at £80+ for OCZ Reaper or Platinum, Geil, G.Skill or Corsair DHX for example.

Case

First Choice: Antec P182
UK Pricing: £97.87 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $126.50 (ex. Tax)

Although it's well over a eighteen months since its release, the Antec P182 is still one of the select few cases that we‘ve ever awarded a 10/10 score to and it’s just as good now as it was back then. Impeccable build quality is coupled with fantastic design, excellent cooling and a compartmentalised design that works wonderfully, resulting in a simply magnificent case that should serve you well for many years to come. Sadly a recent price rise across the whole Antec range has forced the cost back up to £100, but it's still well worth it.

Power supply

UK First Choice: Be Quiet Dark Power Pro 650W
UK Pricing: £95.86 (inc. VAT)

The Be Quiet Dark Power Pro 650W just amazed us with its performance when we reviewed it back in July. With supreme efficiency and quite literally silent running thrown into the mix thanks to its fluid bearing fan, it makes for a fantastic choice.

The fact that it’s modular too just sweetens the deal, allowing you to cut down on unwanted cabling inside your case. The price might be a sticking point for many - almost £100 is a lot to pay for a 650W power supply, but in this case you genuinely get what you pay for and if you can stretch for it we'd recommend you do.

US First Choice: BFG ES Series 800W
US Pricing: $110.99 (ex. Tax)

Sadly Be Quiet doesn't sell its excellent PSUs in the USA, but this BFG model is a great alternative. Although it's not modular, it delivers excellent efficiency and reasonably solid voltage rails, and even when at 75 percent load is exceptionally quiet. For just $110 this is nothing less than an absolute steal - this was the one area where we felt the BFG was let down when we reviewed it earlier this year.

CPU Cooler

UK First Choice: Akasa 966BL "Blue Aurora"
UK Pricing: £23.55 (inc. VAT)

For less than £25, you won’t find a better CPU cooler – it really is as simple as that. Providing cooling on par with £35 coolers, the Akasa 966BL or “Blue Aurora” thanks to its blue LED lit fan, combines both powerful cooling with a relatively low noise 120mm fan that’s genuinely silent at half speed.

Strap this onto your LGA775 motherboard (yes, it’s an LGA775 exclusive) and you’ll be able to confidently overclock your CPU knowing you’ve got cooling to spare, and it's even easy to fit!

US First Choice: OCZ Vendetta 2
US Pricing: $34.95 (ex. Tax)

Again, Akasa isn't yet selling its coolers in the USA, but OCZ's Vendetta 2 cooler is worthy alternative. Fitted with a 120mm fan, but still using the six heat pipe cooling layout of the smaller 92mm Vendetta, it delivers cooling performance 2°C warmer than the Akasa 966, while being a little quieter. It also supports both AM2 and LGA 775 CPUs, so for those who do choose to go AMD, this is the best choice.

Optical Drive

UK First Choice: Sony DRU-V200S DVDRW
UK Pricing: £16.92 (inc. VAT)

US First Choice:Lite-On LH-20A1S-12 Black/Beige Dual Layer DVD±RW
US Pricing: $26.90 (ex Tax)

While you might have more cash to spend, there’s no need to splurge unnecessarily and a DVD-RW combo drive with SATA connection for a little over £15 is still the best option. Both drives come in a retail box that includes a copy of Nero 7/8 for DVD and CD burning, which is worth the few pence extra you’ll pay over brown boxed OEM drives.

Hard Disk Drive

First Choice: Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB Hard Disk Drive
UK Pricing: £73.36 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $103.68 (ex. Tax)

Even a year ago, 1TB of hard drive space for under £100 would have seemed like a fantasy, but now you can enter the “era of tera” for less than £75! The performance of the drive is one of the best there is too, easily beating older generation 10,000 RPM drives thanks to the huge data density on the three 334GB platters inside, all whilst running very quietly. You really will notice the improvement in HDD limited loading times for games and programs.

The sheer size of the drive is also a major positive, with 931GB of usable space once formatted; filling all that will take a very long time unless you’re the most rampant hoarder we know. However, be wary that having one terabyte of your data on just one disk leaves you vulnerable to hardware failures, so consider picking up a second drive in the future and running a RAID 1 array for the peace of mind brought by hard drive redundancy: the motherboards we've recommended both support this feature.