EggXpert

Hi all,

I am building myself a new gaming machine, and just want some advice before I buy these parts.  I already have the Antec 1200 case.  I will also be using the following from my old computer (at least for the time being): 800W power supply, DVD-RW IDE drive, SoungBlaster X-Fi Fatal1ty 7.1 sound card, Western Digital 120GB Sata hard drive.  The following is what I'm considering currently:

Motherboard: MSI NF980-G65  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130236

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103674

 Memory: Corsair XMS DDR3 1600 (2x2GB) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145260

 Also buying Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound.

I just want to be sure these components are all compatible with each other.  I am planning to eventually buy an nVidia video card, but will make do with the onboard video right now until I can save up a little more money. 

Any advice/tips are appreciated.  Thanks!!

• There's not much point buying DDR3-1600 as these AMD chips aren't really fast enough to make use of the faster bandwidth, you'd be better off going with DDR3-1333 with faster timings..  (CAS 7 or lower).
• The 980a chipset is quite old..  If you want SLI + AMD CPU then it's your only choice, but the AMD chipsets that are out for AM3 are far more power efficient.  However, if you DO get an nvidia graphics card later, you can always use your onboard graphics chip to do physics.. Just letting you know that a 980a isn't really any better than a 780a which isn't really any better than the nforce 500 series...   There hasn't been much innovation or development in nvidia chipsets in quite a while..
  
•  The AMD SB850 chipset is right around the corner (within a month or two) and is going to bring with it 6Gb/sec SATA (SATA 3.0) and USB 3.0.. So consider that as an alternative...
  
• The Fermi based nvidia 300 series cards are also right around the corner, but you can get an ATI 5000 series right now if you want DX11 support.