New PC build - any advice?

[Magic Knight]

My mate was going to buy an Alienware and I told him I could build a PC for a fraction of the cost. He has given me a budget of £1500. He'll probably never upgrade it so it needs to have a much muscle as possible. I am leaning towards a high end single GPU because then I might be able to convince him to go dual in a couple of years time.

The Alienware pc he was looking at had the following.

Intel i7 920 (2.66 GHz)
Dual 1GB NVidia GTS 240
6gig Triple channel 1333MHz
2x 500gig SATA-II HDD's

I will probably ditch the NVidia's for a single ATI 5870. There's not much difference in price if I upgrade the i7 920 to a 930 but a very big jump to the 950, is the extra cost worth it? Not looked at mobo's at all yet, I don't think I need anything too fancy because he will never overclock.

Any advice would be great.

[bosing]

If you're going for a similar build, it's got bells on. If you're also wanting to add sole muscle power to the machine, I would struggle to use 2/3 of the budget. You could even use the remainder adding a HTPC extension - which may come in useful cosmetically, compared to Alienware's grills, LEDs and so on.

I've read the 920/950's are (to be) discontinued (need confirmation). The 930 may be your best bet, boasting better performance over the 920, with the 950 reading very poor in comparison (based on reading).

Alienware's value is solely in cosmetic additions, and I'd steer well clear - as you would agree.

[spardin]

id go for the core 5 the 7 with triple ram is just over kill the i5 gives nearly just as good results and is a hell of a lot cheaper

[louis058]

I'd stay with the i7 actually, because it has better performance than the i5, and you actually have a pretty big budget.

I don't know enough about components to suggest any improvements for your existing list, but once you've got a complete components list and have enough budget left, I'd suggest getting a solid state drive to replace one of your SATA drives. If you house your system (and maybe a game or two) files there, you'll get a massive boost in speed.

[Sherak]

At that budget he's gonna get a monster! Personally I would get a Single GTX480, I know dual 5850's would give you slighlty more performace for the same price (not enough for me to care mind) however with the Nvidia Card you get PhysX, SLi scalling and Nvision 3D vision Surround... Which may not be of massive interest now but it does offer a certain ammount of futureproofing...

If you could squeeze the sytem into £1150 maybe increasing his budget by selling his exising monitor to up it to maye £1250/300 I would defo recomend going the GTX480 and with the remaining £350 get a 120Hz 23" Monitor and a Nvision active 3D vision system.....Take it from me 3D really is the next generation of gaming...

And this is pretty cool http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjIzoGnkCZs