[BlackHalo]

Hi,

I'm a total noob at hardware components, and have displayed this noobness during the gathering of components for a new PC I would like to build. I was fine with the whole setup until I read elsewhere on this forum about problems with Quad Core processors and also Direct X10+Vista vs XP stuff.

So my questions are thus: I would like to play games such as Fallout 3, Crysis, etc on this system, how detrimental would it be to buy XP rather than Vista (as I am NOT a fan of Vista...).

Secondly, the setup I'm looking at is as follows (some of the items had to be a bit compromised due to budget-restraints) :

Intel CPU Q9400 Core 2 Quad LGA775 2.66GHz
Intel Extreme Series, 'Skyberg', Intel P45, LGA775
Transcend® JetRam™ High-Performance 1GB DDR3-1333 240-Pin Module
Transcend® JetRam™ High-Performance 2GB DDR3-1333 240-Pin Module
Seagate® Barracuda™ 7200.10 Series - 250GB Serial ATA II (SATA2)
Gigabyte® NVIDIA® GeForce 9800GT, 1GB 256Bit GDDR3
Aerocool I-Cool Plus Gaming Chassis
Unbranded PSU, 850W, Modular Gaming, 24pin, 2x6pin PCI-E
LG 19" LCD Wide 1440x900 700:1 5ms D-sub
LITEON® 22 Speed DVD Super All-Write SATA

And then of course stuff such as keyboards, etc.

I would just like to know if all these components will actually work together (had a spot of trouble in the past while with RAM modules not fitting mobo's) and secondly: do i need anything extra (such as cooling, etc).

I am a graphic designer and will be using the system mostly for multimedia and graphic design work (Lightwave, Adobe CS4, Poser 7, Maya, Apophysis, etc), but I'd obviously love to do a bit of gaming on the side, so I would like to know if this system would be suited/effective for high-end gaming as well? (As stated) Someone mentioned elsewhere in the forum that Quad Core processors and PC games aren't the best of friends at the moment...?

Edited by BlackHalo, 11 March 2009 - 02:10 PM.

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Update: I have built the machine. Put in two extra fans (amounting to four 12cm fans) and everything works perfectly (well almost). Problem is I keep getting the message "setup did not find any hard disk drives" when I try to install Xp 64bit. I have a brand spanking new SATA2 250GB HDD, so i can't see any reason why it wouldn't recognise it? I don't have a floppy drive, so can't run drivers from there. I did find this site about the problem and would like to know if that is in fact the correct advice?

Resolving "Setup did not find any hard disk drives"

Edited by BlackHalo, 17 March 2009 - 03:27 PM.

[BlackHalo]

Update: I have built the machine. Put in two extra fans (amounting to four 12cm fans) and everything works perfectly (well almost). Problem is I keep getting the message "setup did not find any hard disk drives" when I try to install Xp 64bit. I have a brand spanking new SATA2 250GB HDD, so i can't see any reason why it wouldn't recognise it? I don't have a floppy drive, so can't run drivers from there. I did find this site about the problem and would like to know if that is in fact the correct advice?

Resolving "Setup did not find any hard disk drives"

Edited by BlackHalo, 17 March 2009 - 03:27 PM.

[BlackHalo]

Further update: turned out to be a faulty harddrive. Dead out the box. But that's been sorted and everything is up+running now.