What Hardware Should I Buy? - Oct 2008

Memory

First Choice: OCZ DDR2 PC2-9200 Flex II 4GB Series
UK Pricing: £117.49 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $178.00 (ex. Tax)

The OCZ Flex II PC2-9200 is just about the best value high performance memory you can buy. It is limited to just a pair of DIMMs per motherboard so if you're obsessed with running four DIMMs you'll need to look elsewhere - probably to the more expensive Corsair Dominator. The Flex II heatsinks are certainly very beefy and with the memory capable of 1,150MHz and more, both together have plenty of performance overhead to dive into on the right board.

We think it's well worth stretching for these over performance PC2-8500 kits with large heatsinks slapped on the side. As for DDR3, we feel it still just doesn't offer a convincing enough performance increase for the significant extra cash investment to justify it yet, even if 4GB kits are starting to come down in price dramatically.

Case

First Choice: Lian Li V1110
UK Pricing: £178.93 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $315.00 (ex. Tax)

When you buy a premium case, you expect excellent build quality and a whole host of high end features, and that’s exactly what the Lian Li V1110 delivers in spades.

Thanks to a fully compartmentalised cooling system (similar to the Antec P182 and P190's design), which keeps the heat of hard disks and the power supply away from the motherboard and its components, the V1110 is able to run both cool and quiet. While we’ve seen cases perform better, these are usually “wind tunnels” with plenty of high CFM 120mm fans fitted and designed to torture your ears.

Because of its mammoth size, the V1110 has plenty of space for six rubber dampened hard disk drives, E-ATX motherboards and even the longest of power supplies. An enormous removable motherboard tray makes building systems into the case a snap, and the included dual 120mm cooling fans can be speed controlled from outside the case. What's more, they're extremely quiet when set to low.

All in all, it’s a fantastically high quality chassis that just oozes class and sophistication, and if you’ve got the money, you owe it to yourself to invest in one of these.

Alternatively: Coolermaster Cosmos S
UK Pricing: £160.83 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: £244.58 (ex. Tax)

The Cosmos S is an absolute beast of a case, featuring no less than seven 5.25” drive bays, and an enormous single compartment for all your components. Like the V1110 it supports the extra large E-ATX motherboard size, but is a little more futuristic and brash in its design, with those distinctive handles emerging from the top and the much more aggressive front fascia.

With a beefy 200mm fan mounted into the mesh side panel, mounts for a 120.3 water cooling radiator in the roof, and three other 120mm positioned inside, with one in the rear, one in the front and one in the top, the Cosmos S will certainly keep your hardware cooler than the V1110, and if water-cooling is a consideration and you don't want to mod then the choice is obvious – grab yourself the Cooler Master.

However, the Cosmos lacks the refinement, sky high build quality and general popularity of the Lian LI V1110, and for the majority of builds, we’d choose the Lian Li.

Power Supply

First Choice: Corsair HX1000W
UK Pricing: £139.83 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $229.99 (ex. Tax)

While the components we've listed here won't really demand a 1000W power supply, if you want to add a second Radeon HD 4870 X2 or GeForce GTX 280 in the future, or have a pile of hard drives that would would make a Google data centre look small, then a 1000W power supply is certainly worth considering.

Corsair's HX1000W provides solid voltages and great efficiency, but most importantly here: it is excellent value for a kilowatt power supply. Most other 1kW PSUs come in at much higher prices, and often don't offer a great deal of extra performance to justify the cost. It's also fully modular, allowing you to cut down on the mess of cables inside your case, and the cables themselves look fantastic and are of the highest quality.

The only downside is that when close to full load, the HX1000W can be quite noisy, but when running at half load (which the system we've picked out here will barely manage) it's much quieter, and will be hardly noticeable over the other cooling fans in your case.

Very much like when choosing a quality case, an excellent power supply can be seen as a long term investment and by buying with future upgrades in mind, you'll ensure you won't need to swap out your PSU for years to come. Or at least, until some crazy new power supply connector standard is invented to make the industry tick over again...