Looks like everyone has already done an (unsurprisingly) good job of covering the bases, but in the interest of adding "votes" to some things (i.e. if 3 DC'ers recommend something it raises confidence in ti), I'll put in my 2 cents in a couple of areas.
Case: Seems fine, a bit too much "bling" for me, but appears reasonably easy to work in. Handle is extraneous in my view, but you may like the aesthetic, heh. If the aesthetic is *not* a positive factor, there ought to be plenty of other options in the price range, e.g. Antec Sonata Elite (I've used previous gen Sonata cases and liked them very much, and have generally been a fan of Antec):
http://www.newegg.co...Item=N82E16811129057CPU: If future-proofing is really of concern, spend the extra $80 and get the i7 2600 (unless overclocking is actually something you plan to *do* and not just "play with for fun" - i.e. you will end up using the system long-term in an overclocked state - then you don't need the "k" model which saves you some $). It's worth it. Not only is it slightly faster (100Mhz per core), but hyperthreading actually makes a real difference, sometimes as much as 20% additional performance for heavily multithreaded tasks. Since you mention 3D, this may well be applicable to you. I know it is for me. It is also becoming increasingly relevant for high-end games. And, although upgrading later would be easy, unlike say a hard drive where you can have multiple and just upgrade and move your old one into a slave position for extra storage, when you do a CPU upgrade the old one is either wasted, sold *very* cheaply, or you need to buy a bunch more parts to make it useful.
Motherboard: No major opinions here (though I've liked ASUS in the past), but f0dder's point about having a motherboard that can take advantage of the CPU's onboard GPU is an interesting and possibly useful one (only applicable if you get the i5, i7 doesn't have the integrated GPU). This can be a supported config for some tasks (e.g. use CPU's integrated GPU *and* discreet GPU for GP-GPU tasks simultaneously), however I don't know if Intel's GPU tech in particular supports OpenCL, and it certainly doesn't support CUDA, so unless support for the integrated GPUs improves in GP-GPU apps it may never actually be that practical as far as actual applications that can use that config.
RAM: All brands mentioned so far are fine. What you said above is basically true, there are a lot of good-to-great brands. Faster RAM will make virtually no difference unless you're overclocking, which I would just not recommend unless - again - you are actually serious about it (and by "serious" I mean you intend to run your machine way, not "serious" in the sense that you want to go all the way to water cooling or something
). Save the money and buy the i7 instead of i5.
Also, get as much as you can afford, but don't be afraid to get "only" 8GB and upgrade to 16GB in say 6 months (if you find you need it even). Just be sure, as others said, that you get 2x4GB instead of 4x2GB.
SSD: Given money seems to be a concern now I say *don't* get an SSD in the initial build. There are several reasons for this in my view. 1: as recent discussions here have shown, there are still a lot of reliability concerns. 2: although prices are coming down, they're still pretty darn high, especially $/GB. 3: they are one of the easiest, if not *the* easiest components to upgrade in your system, and doing so does not immediately make your previous hardware obsolete. 4: it sounds like you already have hard drives, so it's not like you're choosing between 2 purchase options *now* (although later you would be when you go to purchase the 2TB drive(s)). 5: your new system will be a big jump in performance with the components you've already outlined, so you'll be happy for the time being. When you get to upgrade again with an SSD later - say in 6 months or a year - it will be yet another big boost in speed without having to replace your whole system. The cost-to-appreciation ratio is better if you delay the SSD purchase.
They can make a huge difference for some things, e.g. Windows startup, app launch, game level load time. They give you a nice tangible boost in some of the things that are most traditionally slow in computer use, so the improvement in "feel" is great. *But*, they will not do much to improve actual computational performance, e.g. game frame rates, 3D rendering time, etc. Neither will they make a big difference for dealing with large files unless the file happens to be on the SSD (and with price/GB at this point, that's unlikely). So for example for me, I do a lot of large photo editing, with RAW image files of 20MB+ (sounds small but...) that I have to scroll through at fairly fast speed to review, rate, etc. not to mention when I do time lapse sequences and want to preview my sequence in e.g. After Effects. I notice load times frequently. But none of this would be made notably faster by an SSD because I wouldn't keep my photos on it (unless I splurged for a 500+GB one, hehe).
All this having been said, I don't have an SSD in my main machine myself, so I'm not speaking from as much a position of experience as f0dder and others on the subject. But for me it's just more of a practical consideration given the points I made above.
- Oshyan
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