amielskywalker :
hi, thanks for your response, would you say the Corsair CS650M be enough if I do decide to overclock my system? what wattage would i get if i try and overclock a cpu and gpu? thanks again
Power dissipation scales up very fast with overclocking, however, if you are going to buy a $50 motherboard you aren't going to be able to overclock very far because the voltage regulation on the motherboard itself that provides power to the CPU socket is not substantial enough to allow significant overclocking.
If you want to overclock on the AM3+ platform, the least expensive motherboard that is well suited to do this is the GA-970A-UD3P. Assuming you switch to this board, you will need to account for up to ~300W peak power dissipation for the CPU and VRMs when overclocked. (this is assuming you don't exceed ~1.5V on the CPU).
The peak power dissipation of the 280X will depend on which specific model and what sort power threshold the BIOS will allow. Some models with factory overclocks can be pushed near the 400W territory at peak power dissipation.
If you're following along, you might notice that going from a non-overclocked setup at ~450W peak power dissipation, to an overclocked setup, has put us at ~700W dissipation for just the CPU and GPU, not including the additional fans required to do this, and the remaining system components (~50W+). Assuming you lean a bit more conservative on the overclocks, a 750W PSU is about the right size for this system, and assuming you want the headroom to push the limits, an 850W PSU is required.
This is pretty typical, overclocking can approximately double the power dissipation of a CPU or GPU. When observed from a practical standpoint, mild overclocks can be a value-add, but aggressive overclocking is best reserved for novelty sake. If you want to get your toes wet on overclocking on the AM3+ platform on a budget I highly recommend the FX-6300. For equal cooling, VRMs, etc, it will typically clock at least 15% higher than an FX-8320, which, can translate to better performance in most games, and a pretty reasonable compromise for performance in video editing etc. The FX-6300 allows us to hit more exciting overclocks with cheaper motherboards and cooling. Doesn't hurt that the CPU itself is also typically a bit cheaper.
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