First HomeBuilt, Need Compatibility Help!

You're welcome. Eh, i3s outperform Phenom IIs in gaming because most games only use 2 cores. When you start talking about running programs optimized for 4 cores, its another story. i3s have stronger individual cores than Phenom IIs for sure. i3s also have HyperThreading which allows the CPU to "pretend" to have 4 cores, however its not the same as having 4 real cores in programs that can make use of them.

As far as system longevity. Its kind of a tradeoff. You could technically upgrade to an i5 later on with an Intel board, the problem wtih that is next year Intel will be using a new CPU socket, which means if you want the latest i5 you'll be buying a new motherboard. AMD will be releasing PileDriver CPUs later this year, its too soon to really tell for sure, but its looking like they'll be about as good as Intel's Sandy Bridge or within spitting distance. This is based on Tom's review of AMD Trinity.

PileDrivers will still be on the AM3+ socket, and its possible that SteamRoller CPUs (which are set to be released late next year) will be on AM3+ as well, although this has yet to be confirmed.

I would say as a general statement, yes software will be heading towards using more cores, at least for productivity software like media encoders and such. Game coding is another story. It really hasn't changed much in the last 15 years, even though the games graphics have gotten better, consoles like Xbox and Playstation 2 still dominate the market, as long as they do, game makers for PC are probably not going to much to change their ways. Its quite sad really. PC gaming has a lot more potential if it weren't dragged down by lousy $300 consoles.



More than enough actually. With that video card, you could probably get away with an Antec 380D Earthwatts. Although if you plan to put a stronger video card in the future, I would stick with 500-600 watts in a quality PSU such as the Corsair.