BUFF

interesting post & comparing the size of the development teams involved ThirdWire obviously come out as punching above their weight.

Somebody like SCAN will build it for you & give you a guarantee although of course you'll pay for the service. I could build it for you but I'm always a bit worried about shipping complete systems. Whereabouts are you in case I know anyone reasonably local? I agree that the best way to learn is to do it yourself & will stand you in good stead in future. I can give you reasonable advice/help but ultimately I won't have your exact components to play with - the biggie being the mobo although I can download a manual for it no problem. Btw the DQ6 is being discontinued to avoid overlap with Gigabyte's lower X38 mobo.

& there are quite alot of hybrid sytems COGAS, COGES, CODAG etc.

If you mean the Gigabyte P35T-DQ6 that's a DDR3 only mobo & won't take the RAM that you have chosen. The DDR2 version is the P35-DQ6. The X38 chipset mobos are just starting to show up & are ~ £180. Personally I wouldn't pay £610 for a QX6850 when the £165 Q6600 GO stepping is exactly the same CPU bar the default fsb & it doesn't have unlocked upward multis. A very easy overclock will get you the 3.0GHz & save you £450 (some of which you can put towards a better heatsink/fan than the stock Intel one). I honestly wouldn't get that IBM CD-R/RW (unless you are reusing it) but get a SATA DVD-R/RW (the Samsungs being the quietest that I have used & you can buy a silver bezel for a couple of pounds). As for the gfx card if you have all this cash to throw around that means that you can also afford an nVidia 8800GTX which would be a further improvement - imo save money on e.g. the CPU & spend it on the gfx card. Broadband modem - normally these connect by ethernet into the LAN on the mobo. You can buy a basic external Belkin adsl modem/router 1 for about £10 if you need it & a better one probably £30-40. You should check with your ISP what they say though Networking - if you are only running 2 PCs then the Gigabyte has dual nics so you could connect your other PC into 1 & the ADSL modem/router into the other using internet sharing. Alternatively buy a modem/router with an inbuilt switch - if you can confirm that your old PC is only 10/100 it will save the expense of a gigabit router/switch as that will be the bottleneck in the network. If you only have 1 monitor, kb & mouse then you will want a KVM switch to save continuously swapping plugs between the 2 towers. If you can screw things up & plug them in you can build a PC (being able to read manuals also helps). The actual physical assembly is pretty easy, tidying it up (hiding cables etc.) takes more time & installing the OS & software will probably take the longest. The advantage of doing it yourself is that you will learn, gain confidence & have a far better knowledge of your system which will make future upgrades easier.

worked OK for me the other night.