PC buying advice

[probeater]

Hi all, I'm due to build a pc for a mate and was wondering if everything here is all good value, (he is mainly buying it for hl2) any advice would be most welcome (he has a budget of about ?1000 for the whole system)
I think its best to buy the parts seperatly unless theres a really good deal for a prebuilt system/base unit anyone knows?
The main parts I've decided on are:
CPU amd athlon 2500, barton core 333 mhz - ?75 (comes with heatsink+fan)
Corsair Value Select 512Mb DDR PC3200 - ?65
Harddrive, either a maxtor or weston digital 120gb 8mb -?70
Mobo, don't really know which ones best advice please -??
dvd writer, pionner 106 ?130 although I saw a liteon 4x dvdwriter for ?100 but don't know whether its good or not?
Ati 9600pro ?130
psu and case around ?50
I don't really know about the monitor either, i'm looking for a 15/17inch tft which has a good response time and wont break the bank.
I'm due to order the parts tomorow, and any advice, recommendations would be most welcome, thanks.

[Ciaran]

You definitly need a nForce 2 motherboard. Which manufacturer is up to you, but I reccomend the Abit NF-7 2.0. It has a great soundcard built in that is on par with the Audigy 2, 400Mhz Dual-DDR, 2 SATA and great for overclocking. ?85

I don't know about the particular DVD-RW you are talking about but Lite-On are generaly very good.

I personally don't like TFT's and would prefer to buy a good 19" CRT for less than a 15" TFT.

[replicant]

2500xp is very overclockable.

Therefore do not use a cheap fan. buy something like the Aero 7 heatsink fan from overclockers.co.uk, and couple that with quality thermal cement. My 2500xp is stable at 2.4 gig with the Aero 7, and coolmasters premium thermal cement. However how far the cpu will overclock depends on its steppings.

Motherboard

Abit Nf7 v2.0. Again from overclockers.co.uk. Fantastic board for overclocking and supports nforce 2 400 ultra chipset. There is another version the nf7s 2.0 which supports sata hdd.

Memory

Go for 1 gig

Gphx

Go for 9800pro. Crucial do a good one for 280 notes.

[replicant]

one last thing

TFT

Do NOT buy a cheap TFT. Spend some money on it and get a decent one. Cheap ones do not perform particuarly well. I love my TFT but it did cost nearly 500 notes.