After all of the shop-scouring, penny-pinching and quibbling over precisely which CPU, GPU and PSU to buy, all my parts have finally arrived and I’ve begun to put my rig together – a process which, so far, hasn’t been fraught with problems. Although, saying that, I’ve probably just jinxed it, so I hope that my colleagues don’t use eBay and the Internet to come up with vastly superior machines.

My final shopping list – after taking suggestions from the helpful comments of Grimer, E and Ian Devlin, among others – looks like this:

• Intel Pentium Dual Core E5200 2.5GHz
• Asus P5K motherboard
• 2GB 800MHz DDR2 RAM
• ATI Radeon HD 4350 512MB graphics card
• 320GB hard disk
• DVD+/-RW writer
• An Akasa cable management kit to keep everything tidy and tied down.
• And the astonishing piece of engineering genius that is the Eye T Warrior gaming case.

I spent yesterday morning putting the rig together – without doing any tidying or cable-tying, just in case things went wrong – to make sure that everything works, and I’m pleased to report that it does. I’ve also split the hard disk in two and installed Windows 7 on one partition and Ubuntu on the other, so I’ll now be able to start filling the Open Source OS with the best free applications and updating Windows 7 with the frenzied fervour of progress.

After that, the testing begins in earnest. My processor is an extremely capable overclocker – even with the standard Intel heatsink in tow – and so I anticipate that it won’t be too difficult to get it running stably at 3GHz. I’ll then be trying to get it even higher; I’ve seen a Pentium Dual Core E2200 reach 3.3GHz, so perhaps 3.5GHz isn’t out of the question with my chip. I hope I’m not being too optimistic.

Even a few minutes spent with my machine reveals where my last £10 needs to be spent, though. It’s not a particularly hot machine but it is one of the loudest I’ve ever heard. A quick investigation inside of the chassis reveals that it’s not the CPU fan or the passively-cooled GPU making the noise. Instead, it’s the three case fans whirring away. The fans are arranged in a slightly strange way, too: there are two at the front of the machine, towards the bottom of the chassis, and another on the side of the case directly opposite the CPU.

I’m planning to buy three Ebuyer Extra Value case fans and put one at the front of the case and another at the rear – there are mounts for fans but none were included at the back – with another on the side, seeing as there’s a space for one there. It seems that this system will result in slightly better airflow through my chassis and, if the customer reviews are accurate, then they’ll be quieter than what I’m using at the moment.

As usual, though, I’m open to suggestions. If you know of any cheap – preferably colourful – and extremely quiet case fans that I’m overlooking, please let me know in a comment below.

I’m also still looking for a name. While Kuryakin’s suggestion of ‘The Mandelson’ is excellent, I’d like some more contenders – so throw your various hats into the ring below, too.