Advice on a new build please

[Rsdio]

After countless boring hours reading up and checking prices I've settled on a reasonably final idea of what I'm going to be upgrading to. It is:

Motherboard - Asus A8R-MVP Skt939 Xpress 200 crossfire
CPU - AMD (Venice) Athlon 64Bit 3200+
HDD - Seagate Barracuda ST3200822AS 200Gb
RAM - Corsair (TWINX1024-3200C2PT) 1024MB (2 x 512MB Matched Pair)
Case - Antec Sonata II Piano Black Quiet Midi Tower
GPU - Sapphire ATI Radeon X800 GTO2 256MB

Does anyone see any problems with that setup that I've missed? I'm a little unsure about the whole Crossfire thing, the motherboard seems to have everything my other candidate (A8N-E) has plus Crossfire support so I'm not really losing anything but am I right in thinking that if I get another GTO2 in the future I'll be able to use them both? Or is it just specific cards that are designed for it?

Any other suggestions are most welcome, but I've gone over what I can really afford already (isn't that always the way?) so try and keep it realistic or I'll only get tempted .

Thanks a lot

[SegaMark]

Seems like a decent slection of parts there mate, all decent branded stuff. what PSU are you getting? I'd advise against getting a cheap one of course.

[vertigo]

You'd want at least 350 watts from a PSU these days wouldn't you?
Also, make sure the PSU has enough actual power connectors. I've seen a fair few that only have two or three which is ridiculous and obviously little use to anyone who has more than one hard drive and one optical drive.
If you take a lot of pics with a proper digital camera you might want to consider a floppy drive that has the card reader ports built in.
And don't forget a DVD writer!

[Rsdio]

The Sonata II comes with a 450W PSU, that should be fine shouldn't it?

Didn't bother listing the DVD writer and everything seeing as that's all pretty much gauranteed to work .

Anyone enlighten me on the crossfire stuff?

[vertigo]

Didn't bother listing the DVD writer and everything seeing as that's all pretty much gauranteed to work

Not necessarily. Some DVD writers' discs are incompatible with playing on other drives or DVD players, etc. Buying the right DVD writer is a real pain in the arse compared to choosing a CD writer.
Also depends on what you go for re DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RAM, etc, etc, et****ingc.
I'm just glad mine works properly for everything I've tried to do with it so far.

And yeh 450W PSU should be fine.

[Rsdio]

Well the DVD writer in my current PC (Pioneer 109B) has done pretty much everything I've wanted it to with no problems, so I'll probably just upgrade to the newest version in that line. Hopefully it should be OK.

Managed to find the info about Crossfire that I was after, apparently will need a master card to go with the GTO2 if I decide to do it later on - hopefully by that time someone braver than me will have tried using one with an unlocked and overclocked GTO2 and I'll know what the best way to go is.

Cheers guys, pretty confident that everything should go reasonably smoothly now, maybe I'll finally be able to play Half Life 2 without bloody stuttering .

[NeilMcRae]

are you sure you don't want a PCI express video card/mb combo?

Neil.

[capcom_suicide]

are you sure you don't want a PCI express video card/mb combo?

Neil.

^^ What he said.

I would opt for a better Video card, the 7800Gt is cheap now:

OcUK GeForce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) & Call of Duty 2 Bundle - Retail (GX-032-OK)

(?211.44 Including VAT at 17.5%)

That is tremendous value. But will need a PCI-E mobo.

[Rsdio]

Um.. Unless I'm missing something both the graphics card and the motherboard are PCI Express. I don't think you can have Crossfire without PCI Express, can you?

I might have a look at the 7800GT, the GTO2 I chose can be unlocked to 16 pipes and overclocked without the need for extra cooling to basically run as a X850 XT performance-wise so I thought that was pretty good value for ?150.. Obviously I'll have to go back to the drawing board for the motherboard as well if I get that though, seeing as there's no point having Crossfire with a Nvidia card.

Cheers for the thoughts