I'm looking to finish a custom case mod I was working on about 6 months ago and finally have some extra money to do it. I've been out of the hardware scene for about as long and wanted to get some opinions on my picks especially the mobo and video card, since I seem to have bad luck with ones i pick for myself and that mobo seems to be kind of sketchy. I'm looking to spend around $600 or so. I might increase if there's enough persuasion, but anything less would be good too. I'm just looking for it to be a modern gaming PC and somewhat of media center, nothing too extravagant.

GIGABYTE GA-EP43-UD3L LGA 775 Intel P43 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

EVGA 01G-P3-N959-TR GeForce 9500 GT 1GB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card - Retail

Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-8500CL5D-4GBPK - Retail

Antec BP550 Plus 550W Continuous Power ATX12V V2.2 Modular Active PFC Power Supply - Retail

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80570E8400 - Retail

ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner - Bulk - OEM

Total of a little over $575.00

The 9500GT is pretty slow. I wish Radeon 4850's were still in the $80 price range! However, a Radeon 4670 will destroy a 9500GT. For the extra $2, I would switch.

You can get a Core i3 for less than the E8400, but I'm not up on current benchmarks. I would be hesitant to go with a non-i-series for a new build, but that's me and I haven't done the research to back it.

I'm starving and really need to go find food, but is there any particular reason you're not going for an i5 750?

Edit: here you go - http://www.guruht.com/2009/08/default-intel-core-i3-vs-core-2-e8400.html

$627.93 (plus shipping, minus $10 for rebate) for a current-gen CPU with a faster graphics card.

You could knock $75 off and go with this, which Anandtech overclocked to 4Ghz on stock cooling.

Could use some work on your delts

Sadly... i expected this answer

JLee: Thanks for the suggestion. The main reason I didn't go with the i series processors is because I've been out of the computer building scene for awhile and haven't had a chance too look at them in detail. At a quick glance over them on newegg they were all $200+ and the motherboards that supported them were insanely expensive as well. Looking back, I think i had the filter on newegg to sort by highest price so I probably didn't get a good feel for the series. I'll definitely take another look at them though.

I do need to work on my delts.... and pecs.... and everything else too...:gonk: