Complete audio, Xbox 360, games, Blu-ray player etc setup.

[highlander]

I haven't bought a new PC since just before Oblivion came out.

I have:

Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz
Zotec nVidia GeForce GTX260 (PCI Express, with 896MB of GDDR3 memory on board)
Gigabyte motherboard (can't remember which model)
4GB PC6400 DDR2 RAM
1x 1 TB SATA2 hard drive
2x 250 GB SATA2 hard drives
Windows Vista Ultimate Edition (64-bit)

By buying not-quite-the-latest stuff, and by building the thing myself out of off-the-shelf components, and choosing ones that are on sale, that lot probably cost me about £500. Start with a processor/motherboard/memory bundle, then work from there.

The graphics card, 2 of those 4 GB of RAM, and the 1 TB hard drive were added in more recently. The graphics card was about £100 from Amazon and is still better than most cards you can pick up in PC World for similar money. It isn't all that noisy a PC as I use 120mm fans rather than 80mm ones.

It's as solid as a rock (yes, even with Vista, which everyone assures me is the spawn of Satan), and can run a lot of fairly new games, even without much lowering of graphics settings.

I'm considering buying a new gaming rig and passing this current one over to the Stepson as his PC is a steaming pile of sh*t (I made the mistake of buying him a "budget" pre-built PC system when his last PC kicked the bucket, just to get him up and running - BIG mistake).

Thinking of going for a 2nd-generation Core i5 system, again with a Gigabyte motherboard, but not sure what graphics card to pick. I want my new system to last as well as my current one has, and be able to play the latest games that come out 4 years from now without much toning-down of settings.