Build Recommendations

[SoCalTiger]

Thanks for all the tips guys, it's been a really big help. I was strongly leaning toward the i5-750/760 until I saw BDestroyer's comment about the i7-860 at Microcenter. It is $220 right now (vs $290 @ newegg) and this puts it only $10 more than the normal price for i5-760 ($20 more than i5-750) and Passmark rates it almost equal to the i7-920 . For that small price difference I'd love to have hyper-threading.

Decided I didn't want to go i7-9xx due to increased price of MB and tri-channel RAM. Also decided that the 250 GTS would be fine for my purposes and I can always upgrade GPU next year since GPU tech progresses like mad.

My final build is looking like this:

• CPU: i7-860 ($220 @ Microcenter)
• MB: Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 ($130 AR @ Microcenter)
• GPU: 250 GTS
• HDD: WD Caviar Black 1TB (WD1002FAEX)
• RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB)
• Case: Antec 300 Illusion
• PSU: Antec Earthwatts 650