First serious build, comments please

[sQuark13]

OK, my box is starting to show it's age (2.5 years old), so I want to build a new one. My 9700Pro is getting kinda old, and 512MB of RAMBUS RAM isn't cutting it anymore. Originally I was thinking of a newer 3.2GHz P4, with a high end AGP ATI card, but I've been out of the loop for a while. After some extensive research and immersing myself in the [H]ardforums I think I have a good selection here.

I've only built one other system before, with parts from Fry's and very little research, but it was so shockingly easy that I decided to build instead of buy from now on. I'm looking to make a medium- to high-end machine that will allow me to play games like HL2 and BF2 with almost all the eye candy enabled. But I still want good multitasking performance, so I'm sticking with intel. So far the total cost of all the components has been a little more than I'd like, but I want to do it right. Basically, I'm not shooting for an absolute top-of-the-line machine, but something affordable a little below that with room for upgrades. I will be overclocking CPU, video card, and RAM (if I can) but I don't have the cash to do water cooling, so good air cooling will have to suffice. Budget I suppose is around $1500, maybe a little more.

Case: Antec P160 (nice Al case which I may mod to add more cooling)
PSU: Antec TRUEPOWERII 550W
MB: Abit AL8 (945P NB, lots of features I like, SATA, PCI-X, Firewire, etc.)
CPU: P4 Prescott 630 3.0GHz LGA 775
HS: Thermalright XP-90 w/ 90mm Panaflo fan (I think the XP-90c in all copper looks much better, but at 690 grams and $25 more for 1-2ºC change?)
RAM: OCZ Gold 2x512MB DDR2 533 3-3-3-8 (fast, low latency, not too expensive)
VC: Leadtek 6800GT 256MB PCI-E (I like the massive heatsink and cooler)
HD: Hitachi Deskstar SATAII 7200RPM 250GB
DVD-RW: Plextor SATA DVD-RW
SC: Soundblaster Audigy 2 6.1 (bringing over from my current box)
Various 120mm Panaflo fans, etc.

Right now, the component I'm the least sure about is the RAM. Latency or speed, I'm not clear about which is more important for intel boards, but it seems like people lean towards latency. But I'm not wild about spending $200+ on RAM alone. (Not to mention everyone seems to be saying that BF2 needs 2GB, but I don't see how I can afford two good 1GB sticks.)

Any constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated.

(Oh, I just saw [H]ardocp's $1500 system build thing, and they seem to suggest some Corsair XMS 2x512MB DDR2 675 4-4-4-12 RAM. Latency seems pretty high, any thoughts?)

 

[XSNiper]

Since you are going to go with a Intel Proc. latency doesn't matter as much.

 

[sQuark13]

So, is it worth $25 to go to faster RAM with higher latencies, like this OCZ Gold 2x512MB DDR2 667 4-4-4-8?

What about $40 more for Corsair XMS 2x512MB DDR2 675 4-4-4-12?

-edit The OCZ above is 4-4-4-8, not 4-4-4-12 as I had listed before

 

[XSNiper]

While this is turning into a memory section topic I will say that with my knowledge P4's don't really care for low latency's to much but love when those PC2XXXX numbers rise ever so high. If I were you I would go for the PC25400 OCZ.

 

[dandragonrage]

VC: Leadtek 6800GT 256MB PCI-X (I like the massive heatsink and cooler)

You mean PCI-E. PCI-X is very different from PCI Express.

 

[sQuark13]

You mean PCI-E. PCI-X is very different from PCI Express.

Whoops, sorry about that. Fixed.

And XSNiper, thanks, I'll start a new thread in the Memory section.