My first time building a system

Please fix your links.

I know this will shock you, but you can't put that memory in that board

You will be spending quite a bit less on RAM.

First though, let's find out what you are trying to do. 2K is quite a bit to spend. Do you have a monitor? Your choice of boards will depend on what resolution you intend to game at.

The processor you picked is best left to people with larger budgets. It's worth about 4 or 5 hundred dollars, but people buy it because they have more cash than brains, and bragging about the size of their CPU is all they have in life.

This one will do just as well, and leave you room in your budget for more important things:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819115041

The RAM you listed is DDR3. The motherboard is a DDR2 MB.

Seems link changed or my eyesight.

The monitor max res is 1366 x 768. That makes most of your purchases overkill in the extreme. If you really want to run crossfire GPus as your motherboard choices indicate, then you need a monitor that supports 1900 X 1200 or better.

As it stands, you do not need an x48 MB, and could get by nicely with a single mid range video card and a 500W PSU.

Those motherboards and the RAM are a waste of money... money you need for a monitor.

Here is the board you want:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813131284

DDR3 provides absolutely no performance increase on an x48 board.

All you need is:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820227284

Far better PSU:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817139007

Monitor:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6824001234

Throw in your case and 2 4870s of your choice.

yeah and by the way - If you did indeed mean QX9650 Extreme, it's more like $1000 than $500 - you blatantly don't need that thing - get a smaller one eg Q9550 and overclock the little beast!

Houston - google something like "DDR2 vs DDR3" and read the differences.

Basically the extreme price, the extreme price, and marginal performance make DDR3 a poor choice at this time. Nehalem will require you to go to DDR3, but right now it's pointless. DDR2 is cheap and works great.

The Antec 1200 is a nice case.

You don't need an Xtreme processor unless you want to overclock the heck out of it. Even if you do, get a quad core and do the same. Spending that much on a CPU is a waste.

Since you're sqeezing $$$ from the parents, why not get the most for their money.

Also, I didn't see a graphics card on there. I would assume 4850/4870.

I'm not sure you'll need the 1000w PSU either - that might be overkill.

Good luck on the build.