Please help me! new...ish build.

I successfully completed my first gaming build XD!!!! but suddenly, tragedy struck

specs:
Phenom II x4 695
8GB ripjaws x 1600
(my last MOBO before it failed) gigabyte 970 UD3
XFX dual fan Radeon HD 6950 (this card is huge, will it F*** up my sata ports?)
crappy WD 230GB HDD (because newegg sent me DOA refurb PoS)
Coolermaster hyper 212 evo (had to use stock cuz it doesn't work with the 970 UD3 ^^)
NZXT Phantom 410
Corsair 650TX (is this enough wattage? could my PC have shut down from not enough POWER?

Soooo, I was really excited because I could run virtually any game on ultra and i built it myself   but after about 2 weeks it shut off randomly   i checked the wiring and everything looked fine. I turned it back on and the LEDS and fans flashed on for a few seconds then turned off again. I was told this was a motherboard failure. I got a refund for the motherboard and now i'm thinking of which one to buy as replacement. should i pay an extra 25 bucks for the gigabyte 990fx? what setup processes will i have to redo as far as like BIOS and drivers and such? BTW my cpu has been sitting it its box ontop of the manuals. it won't get damaged right? same with a few other parts- my ram sticks are just sitting ontop of a box in the open, and my video card is in the static proof bag, but it requires a lot of force to install and unistall it to my last board( i think because its so big and it kind of hits the sata ports)

If someone could help a young builder in his quests to build a nice rig, I would be forever grateful. There was a lot of questions embedded in this post so try to answer all of them.

Thank you,