Building Mid-Level Gaming Computer Looking for feedback

Well basicly i wanna put together a nice mid-level gaming computer and have got a few parts but wanted to get some feedback before i bought anything. Please let me know if you have any suggestions, i been unable to keep up with technology the last year or so (due to work) and would greatly appreciate any and all suggestions you might have.


Also can anyone help me decide on which processor and motherboard combo would be best.

Combo One
Motherboard: ASUS Crosshair IV Formula AM3 AMD 890FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition Deneb 3.7GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Desktop Processor HDZ980FBK4DGM - OEM

Combo Two
Motherboard:ASUS M5A99X EVO AM3+ AMD 990X SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

Processor: AMD FX-4100 Zambezi 3.6GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor FD4100WMGUSBX

Graphics Card: XFX Double D HD-687A-ZDFC Radeon HD 6870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity

Memory: G.SKILL Sniper Low Voltage Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBSR2



SSD's: Crucial M4 CT064M4SSD2 2.5" 64GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - Planning on getting two of these and raiding them

Update1: Changed AMD Phenom II X4 975 to the AMD Phenom II X4 980

Nice picks so far. The DD will allow for overclocking, and the Phenom II X4 975 will get you good performance for the price. I'd recommend the 980, since it's the best.

The only suggestion I would make is do not raid the SSDs. You will get no increased performance in normal OS operation and will lose trim. In normal OS operationsm 4kb reads and access times are the most important. Those will not increase with raid.

The only advantage you will see by using an SSD for games is that the game will load faster. After loading the game will not run faster. I have 5 SSDs and have run games from them and from a spinning hard drive. Other than loading, there is no difference in playing that I can tell.I have considered raiding SSDs to have a larger SSD drive. But, in my opinion, the negatives outweigh the advantages. You can run 2 SSDs as 2 seperate hard drives and put the OS on one and data or games on another and still get full benefit of the size. In raid you lose the trim function that keeps the SSD fast and if you lose 1 drive you lose the data on both drives.