Motherboard + HDD suggestions

I was going to wait for steamroller or haswell, but I don't really care anymore. I've heard that both won't make a huge difference in performance much like Sandy to Ivy. I chose most of my components, and I'm trying to keep a budget of $1000 - $1200. I'd rather have it near $1000, but am willing to pay for quality parts. Right now I need some suggestions for a mobo and HDD. I put down the Asrock Extreme 4 as a placeholder. I read some reviews off newegg, and some people had problems with the sata ports. I also heard on Toms and other forums that HDDs are having a higher failure rate due to manufacturing recovering after the floods. Is this true? If it is, I'll just get a SSD for storage until the failure rates decrease HDDs.

In summary...

A. Budget $1000-$1200 (Rather keep it lower, but will pay for quality parts)
B. Need suggestion for Mobo. (Currently have an Asrock Extreme 4 as a placeholder) Not sure about quality
C. Need a storage device. Not sure about HDD reliability after the floods, so maybe a suggestion for a SSD and get a HDD later?
D. Part picker - http://pcpartpicker.com/p/DQmC

I'm going to be using this for gaming, and maybe some video encoding. 95% gaming and 5% encoding.