Ref the CPU fan, I reckon the standard fan should be fine for occassional gaming as long as a) there is adequate cooling for the case b) you keep it clear of cables etc and c) you clean it occassionally - air blower eg. You could upgrade to a more effective heat pipe / fan cooler fairly cheaply but water cooling is only if you want do do lots of overclocking and get big benchmark numbers.

A little off track,

Looks like I will have to upgrade my Desktop PC, the storms in Perth on Monday got it. Now to hope Insurance will cough up the dough....

upgrading a PC
 

try
Overclockers UK
good deals, got one 5 mnths ago, sweet ;)

would 550w psu be enough to power the machine

Still not clear why you can't go for W7; you don't need to get Vista and then W7, because you can buy a W7 Upgrade package. The difference with going to W7 from XP as opposed to from Vista is that you have to do a clean install; i.e. starting from scratch like a new machine. But as you're getting new hardware anyway........

To find out more detail, you can search for w7 upgrade from xp,

cheers,

Jon.

Depends on what else is going in, in terms of HDD, optical drives, PCI cards, attached USB devices, etc.

Use a power calculator such as eXtreme Outer Vision - eXtreme tools for computer enthusiasts - my thought is to increase the answer by at least 50% to allow for expansion, and the fact that it is better to run a powerful PSU at low capacity than a low-power PSU at high capacity.

SD

Another vote for win7 here...
 

I'm afraid I'd also recommend going with windows 7. Vista really was the O/S that should never have been allowed out of QA.

I've used Vista professionally, since Microsoft released it, and eventually couldn't wait to ditch it. When installed, it was reasonable - but gradually became slower and slower, and more erratic. Their fixes didn't really improve it. Having free access to Win7, I bought another couple of hard disks - and after testing it, have now fully migrated over. On the same hardware, doing the same tasks, it's faster and more stable. The only compatibility issues are minor annoyances - such as the inability to use unsigned 64bit drivers without either hacking things, or doing a convoluted F8 boot. As long as the drivers are signed, the Vista one is usually accepted without a problem (and I've never found a driver signing issue with Win7 32bit anyway).

As far as PSU's are concerned, 550w should eat almost anything that you care to throw at it. As a previous commenter has said, it's probably better for reliability to run a big PSU under limited load, than a smaller one maxed-out.

My own experience is that I expect a windows machine to typically last 12-24 months, before it needs flattening and rebuilding. Go for as much memory as you sensibly can. Windows can't manage virtual memory to save it's life - so don't let it go near its pagefile. Give it plenty of RAM instead. And finally, always partition the disk so that your data is kept seperate from the OS and apps. Makes it easier in the long run when Windows does let-go, and you have to reach for the OS disk. :)

S.O.

Quick question what would be the best network card that would work with the motherboard and be compatible

Almost any. But what's wrong with the network port that's already there?

As Bushfiva says - unless you need to add a wifi card.

Any PCI card should work.

SD