First System Build

i don't normally recommend a 1TB hard drive as your primary drive, but if you do, make a 80-100 BG partition for the installation.
If you can afford it, get a SSD (the one used the most recent system builder marathon is a good choice).
I believe you'll have enough power w/ that PSU. The key is if you'll have enough 12v rails. Each card will need its own dedicated rail, so make sure your PSU has enough of them if you want to upgrade in the future.
Newegg has a PSU calculator if your ever curious on about how much power you need
http://educations.newegg.com/tool/ [...] ml?Tpk=PSU Calculator

prob. no motherboard right now is really good for future upgrades. AMD's Bulldozer architecture is about to come out, and w/ it AM3+ socket. If you can wait, i'd get that, and at the very least the CPU u want to get now will be cheaper. The new processors, i think they're called Zambezi, won't work on AM3 sockets

You've probably already seen the benchmark comparisons between the the Phenom II X4 & X6 with the Sandy Bridge CPUs:
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T - 3.2GHz vs Intel Core i5 2500K - 3.3GHz

For the price of your CPU/MB combo you could also get a CPU/MB Sandy Bridge combo in the same price range. And that SB combo has an upgrade path into the next gen Ivy Bridge CPUs.

• MSI P67A-GD55 (B3) 1155 P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 CFX/SLI Motherboard
• Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost) 1155 95W Quad-Core CPU

~$390 vs ~ $430 for 1090T & Crosshair IV Formula

i don't think its necessary to get 2 drives in RAIN (unless you have the cash for it).
Their purpose would be to hold your Operating System and core applications (the ones you use allot, and also games). Everything else you can put on another HDD (win7 has made this easy since you can quickly move where your 'Library' is located)

to do a RAID setup i'd google it.
A site like this, a bit old but still accurate, should give you the jist of it.
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscen [...] ur_pc.html

AM3+ will def. be around way longer than AM3, since its based off of AMD's new micro architecture (their TOCK, of the Tick Tock cycle of architectures)

what size of SSD would you recommended? Since Windows 7 is 16GB + several games would be multiple GB, would a 120 GB SSD be good?

With a SSD boot drive you won't need that $90 WD Caviar Black. SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 1TB $65 would be a good match.

You can tweak Win7's installed sized. Mine is at just over 12GB and I've seen other with older SSDs down below 9GB.

A lot happening with SSDs in the past few weeks and in the weeks ahead. Everyone is waiting for the Sand Force 2xxx controller based SSDs like the OCZ Vertex 3. March 24th?
The Intel Elm Crest SSDs and Corsair Performance 3 SSDs are out but slightly disappointing compared to SF 2000. And the Micron based RealSSD C400 are on the way too.

So if I bought a SSD and a regular hard drive, I would fill up the SSD with only the OS and often used games and applications. Everything else like pictures and music would go on the Hard Drive?

Thats what i do
I moved my Library (windows 7) to another drive as well. All of my files sit on a home server.

I could suggest what's best for today and maybe tomorrow.
Anything beyond that, I wouldn't like to commit.

Also there is the budget issue to consider. No doubt about it, a SSD is a luxury item.
You can build a fine gaming system without one.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] LGA%201155 <----- The cpu's on there with the K at the end (RE: 2500K, 2600K) are unlocked and can be over clocked. In regards to gaming, the 2500K runs pretty much even with the 2600K and even beats it out in some games.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/287?vs=288 <---- 2600K vs 2500K

*Here's a few reviews on the 2500K and 2600K

http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,2833.html

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083

http://www.guru3d.com/article/core [...] 0k-review/

If you don't plan on over clocking...no need for the 2600K. The 2600 will do ya just fine.

Yep. Next year the Intel 22nm Ivy Bridge cpu's come out, and with a simple bios flash these 1155 boards will run those cpu's. There's rumors that those cpu's will o/c to 6.0ghz.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] LGA%201155 <--- Those are 1155 mobo's, the ones with the letter "P" at the begining (RE: P67) are boards that can over clock. Gamers who plan on over clocking and/or running dual vid cards at some time go with the P67 mobo's. The boards with the letter "H" in front of them are boards that don't over clock so well, and they also seem limited on those boards as far as dual PCI-E slots...dual vid card set up. Mind you there is more than a dozen 1155 mobo's that aren't even on the shelves yet. The choices on newegg for 1155 mobo's will more than double here in the next few weeks when all the 1155 mobo's will be released and out on the shelves by then.

It's the series. RE: 1336, 1156, 1155, etc...

1155 cpu's go with 1155 mobo's.

Dont know that I would be quite that hard on AMD. I have one it runs Metro 2033 Crysis Just Cause 2 all just fine. On anandtech most of the games they have to compare to do show a much better showing for sandybridge im not arguing any different. What I will point out is for gaming you could go with a quad core for much less (AMD 955 965ish) and you would be over 70FPS in most games. So if most LCD monitors ppl are using have a refresh rate of 60hz anything over 60fps is not a huge gain. So if you have the $50 go sandy bridge or if you just want a good solid rig that will play any game just fine get a 4 core AMD and save the money twards a second card. IMO that is