Quote Originally Posted by mips View Post
Motherboard $135
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157293 includes free 8GB ram.

Ram additional 8GB $42
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231546

CPU 15-3570k $230
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116504

Total for the above is $407

You need to decide whether you want 8 or 16GB of ram as it makes a $42 difference in price we can allocate towards a SSD & chssis.
Using a i7-3770k CPU would push the cost beyond your budget, it's $100 more than the i5.
I'm certainly going for 16 Gb RAM. My build has a water cooling system, which I have never had before. I would like to give that a try.

AMD vs. Intel? Are the i5s and i7s so much better than the AM3+ to justify a huge price difference? So far I am leaning toward the AMD line. I've had great luck with both brands. My Phenom was great and my servers all have 2 Xeons, which are pretty amazing as well.

Quote Originally Posted by Statia View Post
8GB is already more than you will ever need for the described use (I push on 4GB only when I have VirtualBox running which I gave 2GB for Windows XP).
Need and want are two different things. Did you ever buy a car with exactly as much horsepower as you generally need? 42 bucks for double RAM is worth it IMO. This is a fun build. If 8Gb sticks were affordable, there would be 4 of those instead.