Help with a phenom 965 build! 2010

200MHz will not give you any real life performance gain, so extra $20 is totally a waste!

BTW, all you need is increasing the multiplier of 955 by ONE to reach 3.4GHz without having to change any voltage.

What is the reversion of the MB? Anyway, both version should work as they are all AM3 board.

Nice picks for the rest!

Get a better MB with the extra $20?

The PSU is overkill if you're not adding a dedicated graphics card and hard drives use very little power.
A case with a bundled 400W-450W PSU would handle this fine.
If you do think you'll add a dedicated card later the case and PSU you've selected will provide a great platform, drop in a 5850 or 5870 and you'll have a stonkin' gaming machine.

The 785 is a great chipset and handles high resolutions and HD video with very low power consumption, but very average 3d performance from the integrated Radeon 4200.
For only $20 i'd extra grab the 965 but also add a decent heatsink as the stock AMD's run a high rpm fan, The Coolermaster Hyper 212 or Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme are good value and sport quiet 120mm fans.

Windows 7 64 is the current OS of choice and will let you use all of your RAM, you might want to consider going for 8Gb now as it's quite cheap and will help if your working with large files.

agreed the extra 200 Mhz wont make a big difference...so save those extra $20 and buy a better mb like GIGABYTE GA-MA790GPT-UD3H....

South Bridge:
1 x IDE connector supporting ATA-133/100/66/33 and up to 2 IDE devices
6 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors supporting up to 6 SATA 3Gb/s devices
Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID5, RAID 10 and JBOD

The only difference in the south bridge is support for RAID 5, which you'd be crazy to use on an integrated controller anyway.

785GT-UD3H South Bridge:

1. 1 x IDE connector supporting ATA-133/100/66/33 and up to 2 IDE devices
2. 6 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors supporting up to 6 SATA 3Gb/s devices
3. Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10 and JBOD

The only reason to go for the 790 chipset is for multiple PCIEX 16 slots to support crossfired video cards
There'll be more like a $50 difference in this end of the world anyway.

hey all, thanks alot for the quick replies.

andy- im quite a novice when it comes to computers, will it be a simple task to increase the multplier on the 955? will this cause any extra risks?

will the integrated gaphics card on the 785GT-UD3H be good enough to stream videos, animations and such? and maybe very light cut and paste editing?
if so, are there any reasons why i should go for a better motherboard?

kiwi-ive been told a descent psu is a must as a cheap psu will age parts quicker? if theres no need for me to go for a good dedicated graphics card i'll take your advice and look into a 500w psu.
are there any descent psu's much cheaper then the $162 hx650?

wanting to use multiple hdds, would it be best to go for a motherboard with raid5? i cant say i know much about raid. nothing at all really.
and thanks for the heads up on the 790 chipset, i dont think i'll need support for crossfire video cards. im guessing thats only for mad gaming?

any recommendations for ram? i think i'll be starting off with 4gb.

thanks.

1.
Extremely easy and no risk at all if 200MHz more is all you want. All you need is entering the BIOS and increase the multiplier by one. You can just ask here later if you still don't know how to do it after reading the manual. BTW, all I needed was the manual without having to ask others for help when I did my first time OC. I believe that you can make it too.

2.
i) MB is the 2nd most important component IMO as all the rest parts are connected to it. I will never try to save money on PSU and MB.
ii) Better mid-range MBs offer more useful features(SATA, PCI, PCIE ports, e-SATA, USB) and supply more accessories(SATA cables, CF/SLI bridge).

The AMD black edition CPU's are very easy to overclock but tends to disable the power saving features (cool 'n' quiet).
This is done by altering the multiplier in the BIOS or using the Gigabyte easytune application.
The 965 should be a higher grade chip as it was factory selected to run at a higher fequency (and should have more overclocking headroom.)
As this is to be a work system I would give overclocking a miss anyway to maintain stability, go for whichever CPU the budget allows.

The integrated graphics is more than enough for any task other than 3d modelling or games.
I use 785 based motherboards for all of the mainstream home and business PC's I build, great for HTPC's too.

Corsair make great power supplies but you won't need 650w. See if there is much of a saving dropping to 500W from Antec or Corsair.
Both companies provide PSU sizing tools on their site - Corsair recommends from the CX400 to the HX650 for your system.

RAID5 will let you combine 3 or more hard drives into one large volume, the capacity of one drive is lost for data security to allow for a drive failure.
It is primarily used for enterprise storage where a single drive is not large enough and data security and availibility is paramount.

If data security is a big issue I would opt for RAID1 which mirrors one drive onto another with less fuss and overhead than RAID5

I've never explored the performance benefits of high end RAM, as far as I can tell the gains are relatively minor.
I use Kingston for mainstream and Corsair for gaming systems.

thanks for the info guys.

are there any important features the 785GT-UD3H doesnt have? do you think its lacking anything i need?

how about the antec sonata III case with the 500w earthwatts psu? will that do the job? or is the the extra $50 or so for the antec 300 case with a hx550 or something worth it?

thanks.