Building a new computer:

So far I have bought

Corsair 1000w psu
Antec p182 case
Heat sink for cpu

Need to buy:

Motherboard - ASUS P5E3 Premium good reviews on ddr3 compatibilty
CPU - Q9550
Ram - DDR3 1800 4GB
Hard Drive - 750GB best prices when compared to 1TB drives
Video Card - Board supports crossfire so HD 4870, but seems to run hot and drivers issues, also thinking GTX 260
DVD Burner - newegg $25 special
Monitor - Samsung 2243BWX going for dual monitors, want it to match an older monitor.

I have a flexible budget, this is coming up to around $1600 right now, if I bought everything from newegg, I can save a few bucks if I shop around.

Let me know what you guys think! If I am missing something or I should change something!

you should definitely still get the HD 4870, I'm not quite sure were all these people get this running hot information. Yes, the card will run hot, if the fan is not on! But with the fan running, the card runs just as cool as any other. I have a HD 4850, which is "supposed" to be hotter than than the 4870 and I never get higher than 55C at load. Not to mention, the 4870 is a better card for less $ compared to the 260.

You might also want to consider just a nice set of DDR2 ram, DDR3 does not give significantly better performance for the price, but its understandable if you are attempting to futureproof.

Otherwise, good choices

Get yourself a P5E Deluxe X48 with DDR2-800 and two HD 4870 cards. Or maybe a P5Q and a HD 4870 X2 - the total price is close.

The WD 640 GB is probably the sweet spot now - one of the best speeds and very cheap per GB.

awesome!! thanks for the input, I will definitely go with a 4870 and then maybe down the road, pop another one in.

I guess you really can't go wrong with ddr2 ram at a third of the cost of ddr3 ram.

I will take another look at, at those ASUS motherboards that support ddr2

thanks