New computer - advice please.

[wol-va-rine]

Ah, I'm not used to using abbreviations lol, so if people could please write out the whole word that would be appreciated. Also going back to overclocking, that's making the processor, graphics card etc. run at about 50% higher rate isn't it? It's done by changing the BIOS, I presume by changing the FSB. Dunno, I may do that because performance is increased by a lot, and my native resolution is currently 1024 x 768 and it's LCD, but I'm thinking of getting a CRT so frame rate is not and issue. Your thoughts?

the native resolution is probably 1280x1024, I can't think of too many LCD monitors where the NR is 1024x768, I run a Sony Trinitron 22" CRT at 1600x1200 that I got for free, my job was gonna throw it away and my friend in the IT department hooked me up, if not free a big CRT should be dirt cheap ($10-$15), they are here in the states...

as stated before, water cooling is usually for extreme OCing, most of the time OCing on air is good enough, if you can get a Q6600 a lot cheaper it may be more cost effective to just get that and OC it to ~3.2ghz (pretty easy to do on air cooling with the Q6600)...

don't buy the Creative X-Fi Extreme Audio if you can get the Audigy SE cheaper (here in the states and IIRC on the UK Creative site, the Audigy is about 2/3 the price of the Extreme Audio, 44.99 and 29.99 respectively), believe it or not they are the exact same card, Creative just slapped a X-Fi sticker on the Audigy without making any hardware changes at all and called it the Extreme Audio so they could charge more, the only difference in the two cards are the drivers and more capacitors on the Extreme Audio (but that shouldn't make much of a difference), the Extreme Audio does not have the X-Fi chip, how they can label it X-Fi without having the chip is beyond me...

Audigy SE = Extreme Audio

why pay more for the same card when you can just download the modded drivers to turn your Audigy into the more expensive Extreme Audio...?

Audigy to X-Fi Extreme Audio modded drivers

the Vista Ultimate really isn't worth it if you can find Vista Home Premium cheaper...