New build questions

[Kckazdude]

Been out of the PC loop for a while now and woudl like to build myself a new box that will play some of the newer game titles. Have been looking around trying to get back up to speed since I lost contact. So far I think I want to stay with an AMD base machine and have settled upon either a Phenom II X4 955 or 965 CPU. The Asus M4A87TD/USB3 board has my attention the most at this point as it doesnt include onboard video. I am more leaning towards nVidia video cards. I am not familiar with Gigabyte or MSI boards so I havent really looked into those options yet.

There is no real budget set in stone on this as I am just researching to explore my options. Plans are for some casual gaming and possible OCing. Sometime in the future I may add SLI to the equation but not initially.

Based on this what MB from any manufacturer besides ASRock (bad expirience) would you guys recommend? Also looking for some good memory to work in this as well.

 

[bastage]

as of late biostar has been pushing out good AMD boards with the 8x0 series chipsets, & bang for buck the G.SKILL Value Series is an awesome buy.

If you want to stay higher end, then Asus & Gigabyte boards & G.Skill RipJaw ram.

 

[hossdaddy]

here are a few solid starting points;

Combo: GIGABYTE GA-880GA-UD3H AM3 AMD 880G + AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz $254.98

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 $47.99 + fs

CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W $89.99 - $20 mir + fs

 

[engiNURD]

any particular reason you want to avoid onboard video?

 

[Kckazdude]

any particular reason you want to avoid onboard video?

All that I see coming onboard are AMD/ATI video. I will be running nVidia video cards. The last time I dealt with onboard video it was a nightmare.

 

[engiNURD]

eh, ok. you can simply disable the onboard video if you don't need it. there shouldn't be any problems running dissimilar brands of vidcards vs chipsets (even igp's).