Nice choices although I always go with a Nvidia based vid card. Perhaps a bigger hard drive? 1.5 TB are getting cheaper...

Newegg, Fry's.

Yes, HDs are cheap....probably a waste of time to grab anything under 500.  [OK, so I bought 2 250s for my new machione....they are specifically for OSs [2]....but I also bought 2x 1TB drives...so capacity is 2.5 TB]...

IAmPas, you totally read my mind with that unlocking. I think I'll do that, which board did you use?

Nice choices but I would at least get a bigger hard drive, the cost per gig get cheaper and cheaper as you get bigger, I say at least 500GB but aim for 1TB.

Also do a double check with that power supply... 550W for a gaming rig is a little low...  power is too important to scrape by with especially with gaming

The motherboard you chose has 2 PCI slots; I would look for something with only 1 PCI slot since PCI is on its way out... so it will be wasted space on the board…  I would get a board with at least 2 PCI-2.0x16 slots so that you can plan on expanding for the future.  No sense on paying money for 2 boards, the one today and the other one tomorrow.

And in regards to your video card...  nice choice but you’re better off getting nVIDIA cards from eVGA, BFG or XFX...  they are the only card manufactures that provide lifetime warranties on the video cards…

The card you chose is

Manufacturer Limited Warranty period (parts): 3 years

Manufacturer Limited Warranty period (labor): 2 years

The card manufactures I mentioned above have lifetime limited warranty

Besides ATI blows... no sense in buys 2 cards, the card today and the one you have to buy to replace it.

lol, I curently have a radion 4850 and AMD phenon to although it is not the black edition.  When you get that thing running i can garantie that it will fly.  also btw the 4850 is a brick and is a good inch and a half thick and boy is it long.

.you've done it again

lol, my bad...  bad habits

are you serious...  my bad...

motherboard w/DDR2:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128391

 motherboard with DDR3:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128378

my kid has the second one.

There is some bad advice in this thread.

Let's talk about your power supply. 700W is insane. You're running a computer, not the last line of defense between earth and the alien hoards. You should be buying a 400W-500W unit. But I don't expect you to take my word for it. Check out this review of the Radeon 4850. The page I linked to lists power consumption. At load, the test system with a Radeon 4850 used 236 watts. Note that this is not the video card - it is the entire test system. You would be fine with a 350W PSU, to be honest, but its always nice to have some overhead for upgrading.

Your motherboard selection is 100% awesome. It would be dumb to buy one with two PCI-E slots unless you plan to purchase two cards right now. The reason for this is that in a year, a Radeon 4850 will be slow compared to the new ones and you'd be better off buying a new single card rather than adding another one to it. Plus Crossfire scaling is not that hot - adding another Radeon 4850 won't double your performance.

ATI currently dominates most price points that are relevant to consumers and certainly to you. Lifetime warranties are nice, but the thing is you're going to be replacing this card in a few years anyway. This means having a warranty of more than a few years isn't a big deal.

As far as the hard drive goes, I would recommend a Western Digital Caviar Black model. Western Digital is the firm performance leader right now, and Hitachi really has nothing on them.

I like it, it's very pretty for a good price I don't see what you could do with 1 terabyte unless you did alot of music or pictures, I went with 128gb ssd, i don't know which is cheaper but other than that it's a pretty piece of machinery...mmmmmm machinery

Typically the rating claimed fora PSU is 'theoretical max' and not sustainable or reliable. A 700w could be nothing better than 550 sustained and it is far more important to not be loading one near its peak.

I'm sure you'll 'scoff' at my adoption of a 1000w PSU then.  That's fine....but it's nice to know I'm fairly unlikely to overstress it anytime soon.  Also, large power ratings can just be coincidental to getting a PSU of better quality and/or features.

It's certainly not 'insane' to consider 700w, not when considering any prospect of future expansion...

i guess my using a corsair hx850 with a radeon 4870 is overkill then. that's sarcasm, folks. i'd put a 700 watt psu in that rig over a 500 watt unit any day. regarding the motherboards, he wants to unlock the 3rd and 4th cores of the 550. that can't be done with the amd 770 based mobo.

i've yet to see anyone who unlocked the 550 using a 770 based motherboard. a friend of mine who works for amd (he's a regional sales rep and has organized some lan parties for amd in the past) has told me that an amd 790 based board must be used to unlock the 550.