Without a doubt, thanks for all the help though guys.

okay germ, after trolling through newegg for hours and reading reviews and researching, this is what ive come up with. Give me any pointers or suggestions im going to start grabbing 1 or 2 pieces at a time till she is done.

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz
159.99. i picked this one cause the 2.9 was only like 30 dollars cheaper so why not go for the fences.

ASUS M4A78T-E AM3
79.99 open box. or 120 for new.

SAPPHIRE 100284L Radeon HD 5750 1GB
144.99 gonna start with just 1 of em but plan on going crossfire soon after she is built.

Antec EarthWatts EA650 650W
84.99

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB DDR3 1600
114.99 look at the timings on this ram. Timing: 7-8-7-24 @ 1.65v

WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM
74.99

Antec Three Hundred Illusion Case
59.99. i still have my old case so i might not get this. still debating. im strange and kind of want to give this new system a new personality if that makes any sense.

ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7
39.98

LITE-ON 24X DVD Writer
23.99

grand total of $783.90

funny thats cheaper than my old desktop was when i built it.

When I was looking this past week at upgrading you had the majority of what I wanted to get, except I wanted a SSD HD because they are kewl, and I already have over a TB for regular hd's.

If you are on a tight budget it all looks good, if you can float a few dollars I would make some changes. I'd consider stepping up to a Corsair powersupply, the 550vx is 69.99 AMIR, and the 750tx is 89.99 AMIR. Corsair power supplies are of much better quality over the antec's. I'd also consider a better video card, at the least a 5770, but that can depend on what resolution you play at. Any particular reason you chose a motherboard with onboard video? I doubt you plan on overclocking, so you shouldn't have any issues with temps and the arctic freezer... For the money though, xigmatech makes some good HSF's as well.

I already own this case from Antec:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811129021

I absolutely love it. Keeps everything cool even though I'm OC'ing like a bitch.

I have two SSD's in raid 0, and yes, they are very kewl. Make sure you don't get anything below a 64GB SSD, but I would really recommend 128GB. SSD's suffer from performance chokes more so than mechanical hard drives as they fill up. Also, make sure you get one that supports trim and you do a lot of research before you purchase. Check out my thread on the two drives, I believe in there I talk about some good resources for researching purposes.

Thanks for the tip. I was just going to put my OS and whatever FOTM game I'm playing on it, nothing else.

I will run some benchmarks once I get home today to see how much of a difference in performance I am really seeing once I added all of my programs and games to the raid array. I still have like 80GB free or so, I think.

noticed the onboard vid just that mobo has the ddr3 1600 and 2 16x pci slots most and was am3 that was what i searched on newegg when picking motherboard.

which brands should i shop for the 5770, its only like 10-30 dollars more than the 5750 i had picked

yea money is a big issue so i have to squeeze as much as i can out of every dollar. it will probably take me a 2 or 3 months to get the money to put this together. and i would probably be selling my laptop for part of the money. will trade HP dv9009nr 17inch for Radeon 5770!!! lol j/k. might even have to ditch the xbox 360. but that would be a hard one to do, i use it to watch tv more than play games. netflix ftw. but with that pc i would be able to stream HD to my tv wouldnt i so that would make up for that.

raidmax sagita case i have now.

u think that heatsink is overkill?

okay took the case off. got corsair 650w. and Sapphire 5770.

new price is 753$

lol i have 400$ burning a hole in my pocket right now. that i know i should use on other things but im so tempted to order some of this stuff.

Welp ended up buying the 5770. We'll see how it works after my test on Thurs.

hell ya, let me know how it works.

Welp I bought the wrong product. I bought the 5770 from Fry's but I thought it was MSI's hawk version as I couldn't find another MSI 5770 on a quick search on my phone through newegg so I thought they were one and the same. Turns out they have another 5770 thats more cheaply made and isn't available on newegg. Going to take it back and just newegg it. Was trying to be discrete with the wifey but fail on me.

Fuck. I just realized I threw the bag away with the receipt in it. From Fry's website I notice that they don't take it back if you don't have the receipt, but I just bought the fucking thing yesterday. Anyone have any experience on returning something there without the receipt?

Edit: Found out they can do it through CC#.

And since I'm the only one posting : I returned it today and am going to order on newegg. I just can't find a store that's as good as newegg.

Yeah Fry's is the closest thing for us around here and it is over an hour away from me. Everything else is retail trash or extremely expensive at a specialty computer store.

Agreed Whiz, Fry's comes close, but just can't match the prices of Newegg. Well I know you said not to upgrade, but I did anyways. I currently have a 1.8ghz dual core with 1mb cache, 2gb ddr2, and a 9600gt. I figure these new items will help me out at least for the next year. I should be out of school in a year and have a better job than the one I have now (hopefully my masters will be worth something more :D), thus I can actually afford a nice computer then. BC2 is running better since I've remembered to OC but I wanted it to run well, not just mediocre, so I bought:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820231098

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814102858

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819116076

i always use newegg. unless its black friday sale or something crazy like that.

Yeah, me too. If I oc'ed my 1.8ghz to 2.7ghz, I think I can OC this one pretty well too. I have an aftermarket heatsink and thermal paste already so no worries there.