Thanks for the motherboard recommendations, Hazaro.
All right, well I finally put together a test build. Would like some advice on it. Not too sure about a few of the components, so some advice would be appreciated.
Basic Desktop Questions:
Budget: ~$700 (but the more I can hit that "sweet spot" between price and performance the better). USA
Main Use: Gaming
Monitor Resolution: 1680x1050 for now. Possibly 1920x1080 in the future. Don't think I'll go higher than that.
List SPECIFIC games that you MUST be able to play: Nothing too crazy, but I'd like it to be able to handle things coming out in the future decently. I don't need Ultra settings on everything, but a system with enough life in it to handle things decently for a few years is preferred. I'd like to play Crysis, for example, and some games that I got from the Steam sale (Just Cause 2, Darksiders, Batman: AA, Fallout: New Vegas). Deus Ex: HR in the near future.
Are reusing any parts?: Yes. I'm reusing the case, optical drive, and HDD. The HDD is one I got recently, and is fine. May upgrade to an SSD as well in the future, but that won't be for some time.
When will you build?: Could wait a month or two. Basically, once I nail down the specifics of what I want, I'll probably wait for sales and the like.
Will you be overclocking?: Yes, but not right away. With this build, I could see myself running at stock speeds for now, and then a year or so down the road upgrading the video card and overclocking the processor.
Here's what I'm looking at right now:
Not too sure about the motherboard. Picked one that seemed to have what I needed, had decent reviews and a good price. Open to suggestions on that. And is the GTX 460 a good choice? What about 4GB of RAM? Is there really any benefit -- at this time -- to 8GB? From what I've read, there doesn't seem to be much of a benefit to 8GB, at least for what I'll be doing.
That PSU had great reviews, and was a good price (and I wanted a modular one). I don't know if it would handle overclocking the i5 2500k at all though...
Any suggestions would be much appreciated!