Thanks MonkeyFish
Well my "Stop-Gap" has become a more permanent measure... my new spec is as follows:
Existing Coolermaster ATC210 Alu Case
Seasonic S12 600w ATX2.0 (nVidia SLi Compliant) PSU
Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra Mobo
AMD Athlon64 Venice 3000+ CPU
Zalman CNPS7700-ALCU Ultra-Quiet Cooler
2Gb (2x1Gb) OCZ Platinum EL-DDR RAM @ 400Mhz CL2.5-3-2-5
BFG GeForce 7800GT OC 256Mb PCI-E
Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Fatal1ty Edition
300Gb Maxtor DiamondMax Plus10 NCQ HDD (SATA2, 16Mb)
Existing 160Gb Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 HDD (SATA, 8Mb)
Existing 160Gb Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 HDD (SATA, 8Mb)
Pioneer Slot-Loading DVD-ROM & Pioneer DVD-RW
Hardly ground breaking, but both Quake 4 in Ultra & F.E.A.R at near maximum are playable... so its all good