My current system has been on the go for five years now, and it's showing its age. So I'm thinking of building a new machine this week and have a short list of core components that I can get for under £400:

  • ASUS M4A88TD-M EVO/USB3 880G Socket AM3 HDMI DVI VGA Out 8 Channel Audio MATX Motherboard
  • AMD Phenom II X6 1055T 2.8GHz 9MB Cache Socket AM3 Retail Box Processor
  • Corsair 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz XMS3 Memory Kit CL9(9-9-9-24) 1.65V
  • Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache

I have a few questions on it, though - firstly, of the items above, is the motherboard a good starting point or would I be better off with something else?

Secondly, is it worth going for the 3.4GHz Phenom II over the 2.8GHz one?

Thirdly, I recently bought a OCZ StealthXstream 600W PSU to replace the failing unit in my old system (hence the idea of building a completely new rig!), and wondered if that's got enough grunt for all of the above should I go with a 3.4GHz processor?

Finally, I'm going to hold off on a dedicated graphics card for now and just use the onboard graphics and sound, but had looked at a ATI Radeon HD 4770 as a potential sub-£100 card. Would this be a worthwhile upgrade, considering I'm not a really hardcore PC gamer, and with regard to the PSU, would I have enough spare horsepower to run it?

Use-wise, I'll be doing a little bit gaming - namely rFactor or iRacing, and some picture and video editing on the new system, so it needs to be a good all-rounder. I'll probably end up running Windows 7, too.

Any suggestions for alternative parts would be most welcome, although I do want to stick with Corsair memory as it's served me so well in the past.

Thanks!