Originally posted by sammorris:

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The 850W PSU is massive overkill unless you're going to spend nearly £1000 on graphics cards. To give you an idea how much power 850W is, I run an overclocked quad core CPU, and two Radeon HD4870X2s (rated at 572W total - the average graphics card is 150W), and yet my total system power in the most demanding games is just over 700W.

It all depends what you're after in terms of games performance. If you just want some games but don't care if you have to run them on low settings and/or get some lag, you don't need to spend much. However if you want good graphics and good performance, you will obviously have to spend a bit more.
Far and away the best value graphics cards out there at the moment are the newly-released Radeon HD6850 and HD6870, at around £140 and £175 respectively.
It wouldn't give you much room to upgrade, but you could run the HD6850 happily off a Corsair CX 400W PSU. The HD6870 you'd want the 550W VX, and that would be ample.

If you want a really high-end card (the HD6870 is very similar to the HD5870, so it's still very powerful) then you would be best waiting for the HD6950 and HD6970 in November, which will be a bit more powerful (roughly 25% and 50% respectively) but a lot more expensive.

HDTVs as gaming monitors are OK, but consoles work well with big HDTVs when you sit a distance from them. Big HDTVs do not work very well as PC monitors as their definition is very low.

Lastly, ditch the Asus motherboard. Asus boards are pretty problematic and unreliable these days. Swap it for a Gigabyte P55A-UD3 instead.
Remember, you need RAM with your system. I always recommend Corsair XMS3, 1600mhz.

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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Fine, but you don't need the 750W PSU, a 550W VX will be fine.

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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Only if you're likely to use two 6870s. 750W is overkill for all but top-end systems, the only reason you want it over a smaller 550/650 unit is that it has four PCIe connectors, of which an HD6870 requires two. The actual power consumption of an HD6870 is such that a 450-500W unit would actually be able to power two of the cards perfectly fine, it's simply that you would need the extra connectors.

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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The M59 isn't very well specified as standard for cooling. If there's extra room in your budget it may be an idea to upgrade to something like the NZXT Tempest Evo. If you're unwilling to spend on a case, or are dead-set on the appearance of the M59 then that's fine, but I would recommend the purchase of the additional fans the M59 allows to be fitted. It's not mandatory as HD6870s don't get hot, but it may prove useful once the PC becomes older and dustier, to prevent overheating mishaps.

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