Bare with me if you’re not interested in computers, it’s about to get incredibly geeky up in here because today I finally decided to pony up the £347 and buy a new computer.

I’ve always been an avid PC gamer but the combination of MacBook and Xbox 360 just outweighed tweaking settings and frame watching. I mean, the 360 would play games much better than my PC could and the MacBook did the rest without the faffing around with Norton or generally bad operating systems. That combination left me with two years of a PC-less existence.

That will soon change though, I’ve finally taken the plunge and spec’d out and bought the computer of my… well not dreams, I don’t dream about that kind of stuff.

The thing I love about consoles is that they’re incredibly small and well designed. I admit the original Playstation 3 isn’t to everyone’s taste but it looks better than gaming PCs with spikes and glowing bits on them. So because of this I’ve always wanted to build a micro ATX – that’s really small for those who don’t speak computer – in the vein of consoles. I bailed out of getting the £100 Lian Li case that would have achieved that but considering I don’t want to overspend, I’ve done alright.

So what will £347 buy you?

• Corsair XMS3 4GB DDR3 £85
• Intel Core i3 530 2.93Ghz £72
• Gigabyte GA-H55M-S2H £56
• Arctic Cooling Alpine 11 Pro CPU Cooler £8
• Western Digital 250Gb 7200RPM Sata Hard Drive £25
• Best Value S001 Micro ATX Desktop with 450W PSU £30
• Sony DVDRW 24x SATA £16
• Postage £xx
  

I’m still missing the most vital piece though, the Graphics Card. I’ve been debating what one to get for a while, anyone got any recommendations? The cheaper the better, I only want to have the option to play recent games.