First time build, need advice.

[Sean W.]

to add to what muffin man said, you dont want to skimp on the powersupply, i know it may seem simple and it only has one job, but if you get a cheap powersupply, you will get power surges that could harm your hardware, you could have bad electric contact, bad manufactoring, you really do get what you pay for, and a cheap powersupply can give you massive headaches down the road. like i said, it may seem like a simple thing, but you dont want to cheap out on it

 

[RaoulDuke]

Awesome information on PSUs can be found on these forums:
*READ FIRST* Updated Power supply guide.
It should be the 2nd sticky on the Building, Buying, or Upgrading High Performance PC Systems front page (not linking since it will take forever to post and we're already on the forums). It even has links to wattage calculators at the bottom of the first post so you can check specs against what you will need.

 

[KJamesJR]

I'll take your advice on this. Will (or is) this CPU still up to date with the times? I was thinking I'd probably save more money getting a decent AMD now, instead of having to buy another shortly down the road. I was looking at the AMD Phenom II X4 945, The price isn't too bad for a CPU that I'd be using 1-2+ years. Though I don't think it combos with a mATX board... Would this be a wise decision? I'm not going to be doing any overclocking on this sucker so I would like all the readily available power now (without going 6 core).

Okay, thanks.

Okay, my last set-up. It's a bit over my budget but I figured I can buy them seperately....

Case (may go with a different one for the same price)
Newegg.com - APEX Vortex 3620mini Black Metal / ABS MicroATX Tower Computer Case

PSU
Newegg.com - Antec NEO ECO 400C 400W Continuous Power ATX12V 2.3 / EPS12V 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply

HDD
Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Vid
Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE 100287VGAL Radeon HD 5670 (Redwood) 512MB 128-bit DDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

Memory
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820144461

Motherboard
Newegg.com - BIOSTAR TA880GB+ AM3 AMD 880G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

CPU
Newegg.com - AMD Phenom II X4 925 Deneb 2.8GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Processor HDX925WFGIBOX

Not much has really changed accept the mobo and cpu... What you all think?