The Scottish Boinc Team

Main machine out of action temporarily (hopefully!)

Turned itself off, I flipped the main switch on the back off and on again and got a shower of sparks. I suspect the psu has blown, but I'll have a closer look tomorrow.

If I do need a new one, any ideas what I should put in a core2quad with a midrange GPU (once I upgrade that as well)

If you are thinking of a low/medium end Core 2 Quad you might find that an AMD Phenom II X4 is just as good and a bit cheaper. For example an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83 GHz and an AMD Phenom II X4 965 are more or less equivalent...

Performance on many BOINC CPU projects can depend a lot on L1/L2/L3 cache so it's a good idea to take a look at these characteristics as they can speed up the throughput significantly... as well as make games other things a lot smoother.

The GPU card choice depends on which GPU projects you like doing however the AMD / ATI combo isn't bad and it's usually cheaper than Intel.

... Naturally there's always the i7 but that's another price range.