Building a new PC -- Advice?

[Necronopticous]

Well, I've gotten my 2010 tax return back and I've finally got the funds to build a new PC. This is the first PC I've built in years, so a lot of the new technology is tripping me out. Seriously. SATA III??? Triple channel RAM??? I'm going nuts.

I did some research, and here's what I'm looking at right now:

Case
Power Supply
Motherboard
CPU
RAM
Video
SSD
HDD
DVD

For those of you well versed in this sort of thing, how does this look? Any red flags in what I've put together? My absolute limit is $1500.

[flux]

Looks fine to me. I have the same power supply and HDD and both have been great. I don't see anything that should be incompatible with anything else.
Is there a particular reason you're putting an SSD in a tower? Are you doing something where harddrive data speed is that much of an issue?

[Necronopticous]

My plan is to put my frequently used app/game installations on the SSD (including my OS installation) for the super fast load/boot speed, and bank on that 6GB/s SATA III hookup. It's one of the technologies I haven't had a chance to get my fingers on until now, so I'm itching to try it out.

[Jockel]

Switch that CPU to a Core i7-2600K, which can easily be OCed to 4ghz with the stock cooler for maximum pwnage.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Ha, sweet!

I was looking to build a PC this time last year but came across an no-OS pre-built which ticked all the boxes and was cheaper than the sum of its parts. I'll probably go nuts on a PC once I have a place big enough to have a huge TV... which will probably coincide with the next generation of consoles, thus making it worthwhile. It sucks a bit to have a mid-range card that I know has power in reserve, but not enough games are built ground up for PC.

[gct]

Switch that CPU to a Core i7-2600K, which can easily be OCed to 4ghz with the stock cooler for maximum pwnage.

I don't think Intel has sorted out the problems with the LGA1155 motherboards yet, they are still under recall. I don't think it supports tri-channel memory access like the LGA1366 platform either. IMO X58 is still a pretty solid choice at this time, and I recently did 3 builds using the i7 950 processor. See if you can match a price on the i7 960, my local shop has them for the price of the 950 you have posted. You can also get some nice CPU coolers for pretty cheap these days, $10-$20 will get you a decent heatpipe tower with a 120mm fan.

For a permanently-installed mass storage hard drive, I would still use a WD Black and it will only cost a few dollars more than the Green. I use Greens for the drives that I swap frequently.

For the SSD, the OCZ Vertex 2 60GB should be around the same price and probably a better performer. Also, go with at least 120GB if you can afford it, you will find that once you start installing games, 64GB is very difficult to work with. Even 80GB will give you a little bit more headroom.

[flux]

My plan is to put my frequently used app/game installations on the SSD (including my OS installation) for the super fast load/boot speed, and bank on that 6GB/s SATA III hookup. It's one of the technologies I haven't had a chance to get my fingers on until now, so I'm itching to try it out.

Not sure if I would feel comfortable putting an OS on an SSD. They have a finite number of writes that can be done to a location before it physically breaks down and an OS does tons of system writes in the background. I would be worried that after a couple of years I would start losing hard drive space (although in fairness magnetic drives get bad blocks all of the time).

[Necronopticous]

Not sure if I would feel comfortable putting an OS on an SSD. They have a finite number of writes that can be done to a location before it physically breaks down and an OS does tons of system writes in the background. I would be worried that after a couple of years I would start losing hard drive space (although in fairness magnetic drives get bad blocks all of the time).

I've read some articles on how to set up the OS to minimize background writes, or delegate them to the data HDD, to prevent these sorts of risks. It's probably one of the first things I'll do once I load this baby up.

[StarCreator]

This thread would probably be better in Hardware - we've had a few similar threads pop up.

I'm seriously behind on what good CAS timings for DDR3 are - the RAM you've got here is 8-8-8-24. Lower numbers mean it's rated for better performance.

I have no experience or knowledge of the GTX 470 - my recent video card purchase was the Radeon HD 6870 (just mailed the rebate in today!). Couldn't be happier with it, though now my CPU (still using the E8400 I bought three years ago) is the main bottleneck in anything I do...

On the optical drive, at last check Sony Optiarc drives were king.

[Stormwatch]

The RAM is a rather obvious mistake. You've picked 2GB memories rather than 4GB ones, it will be a waste of slots.

Get six 4GB memories, and max out that bastitch already!

[Heartwork]

Cases like that with clear panels and LED crap everywhere are gross and tacky, IMO. Functionally there's nothing wrong with this build, though.

[Necronopticous]

The RAM is a rather obvious mistake. You've picked 2GB memories rather than 4GB ones, it will be a waste of slots.

Get six 4GB memories, and max out that bastitch already!

I thought about this, but decided to go with the better quality 2GB sticks RAM. The mobo has 6 slots, so I figure if I want to add more down the line I can add another 3 2GB sticks for 12GB. I guess I just can't imagine needing more than 12GB of DDR3 triple channel RAM.

[Stormwatch]

Well, if you do things like graphics, multimedia, databases, scientific simulations, machine virtualization... there is no such thing as "enough memory".