First time builder question(s)

First off thankyou in advance to anyone who takes the time to read this.

I'm about to start buying to build my own PC, looking to spend about 300 GBP without a monitor and had a AMD dual in mind, decent graphics card and nice motherboard to cope with upgrades and extra RAM for the future.

I currently have a pc with a 300W PSU and a few components I'd want to pick out for the new system to keep costs down (DVDRW, DVDROM etc) and basically sacrifice if I need anything for the new one. I do have a few queries though:

1. As far as I know the following components are all compatible, are they?
Motherboard
RAM
Graphics Card
Processor
Hard Drive
I'm looking particularly at the graphics card and hard drive, I'm quite sure the rest will be fine.

2. Will a SATAII drive work on a SATA motherboard? And is there any hard drive I need to buy specifically, since the motherboard states 3gb/s connectors and the one I'm looking at is 16mb cache but 300mb/s, will it just have a lower transfer rate?

3. Do you class these components as good? I've had a look at reviews on ebuyer etc and the ones I've gone for do seem to have good feedback and ratings.

4. I will need a new PSU won't I, 300W won't cut it, a 400W supply should though? I want to put a zalman PSU fan in and 1 or 2 Antec case fans, DVDRW+ROM and other general components, just the usual.

Again, thankyou in advance. Other components I'm putting in are:
2x AKASA case fans
Case and 400W PSU
Zalman PSU fan

 

Ram search page for Kingston compatable to your Motherboard - the one you are considering is not listed for your Motherboard.
http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/hyperx/modelsinfo.asp?root=&SysID=30302

 

Sapphire X1650XT 256MB GDDR3 Dual DVI TVO PCI-E, - is on the maco list for your motherboard, so it is compatable.

 

And, Welcome to Majorgeeks -

Maco site for your graphics card compatables
http://www.macotechnology.com.au/products.asp?cat=Video Card&showpd3=Gigabyte&showpd=0&showpd2=1

 

Sata 3 Gbs connections are for sata11 (300mbs) Hard Drives
Go to this link to read up about it

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2454

 

Akasa 120mm case fans are a good choice, - check that your Case has 120mm fixing points , - I assume you are putting one at front, one at rear.
Your case description says 2 80mm ,at front, + one 80mm, at rear.
You might not have fixing holes in case- If you decide to mod it yourself, you would have to do it before fitting anything in the case, and then blow out any filings with compressed air.

 

Zalman are very good fan, but check how much room you have around the CPU,- How close to Memory slots, and PCIE slot.

 

Your Processor is on the supported list.
Get some Artic silver for seating the heatsink and fan to CPU.

Winpower psu
Should be o.k to start, to keep budget down.
You have this thrown in with the Case, so , no expense.- You can always replace, if found to be insufficient under load.
http://www.hec-gruppe.com/englisch/produkte/netzteile/silent/400arptf.php#
,
click on specification, and you can see the 12v, and +5v ratings.I hope that information is what you were after.
Others may come on to this threadf, and add to, or , give more advice- so come back to check.
Good building, :wine


baklogic

 

Thankyou so much for the help, it has been invaluable, and it looks like it took you about an hour! I can't thank you enough, I had a search around but found nowhere near as much information as what you've just given me. Looks like it's just the RAM and fans, both easy enough to remedy. Thankyou again

 

Glad it helped, that is what Majorgeeks is about, as I have seen it.

When configuring, study MajorAttitudes recommendations, here

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?p=885308#post885308