The 930 overclocks like a beast, a little over 4.3 GhZ safely and easily if you have the cooling, though at its base 2.8 it is still absolutely amazing. I can't wait until more programs start using the Hyperthread of the quadcore it has. Should be absolutely fabulous.

Also have you thought of getting triple channel now that you have an i7? Though it is more expensive and you get 2 gigs less. The i7 really benefits from triple channel though, or so it seems.

If you want to spend more of your budget, something like an SSD will improve real world performance more than a better CPU like for instance:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148361

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148348

128GB Drive... $270 dollars BUT its super dooper quick. My Windows 7 with an SSD is night/day compared to one with a mechanical drive.

I would LOVE a SSD but it's just not in my budget, maybe in the future (especially since I forgot to add Windows to my budget and I forgot about a nice gaming headset and decided to get a new hard drive anyways since the ony on my current compy isn't too big anyways).

Anyways, thanks for the help yall.  Sadly, I'm super impetuous and Fry's had some pretty awesome deals so I went ahead and just went with the Mobo processor combo I had up there since I going to get a total of about $100 off that.

Ahh well, all is good.

Man, I just have some kind of weird luck when buying/building computers.  Every time I think about buying or building a new computer something happens.

Tonight, the motherboard on my laptop crapped out (luckily still under warranty, I really don't need to spend the $800 it would cost to fix that) so I'm having to use my old crappy PC until I get my final parts on Monday. 

I totally forgot what Windows XP even looked like.  I miss snapping windows...

If you're using a low cap SSD as your boot drive, how do you install Steam (and the dozens of Gigs of game data) on your non boot drive(s)?

That has been one of my big reasons to avoid switching to SSD until prices are reasonable enough that I can buy at least 256GB (which would give me enough space to install my Autodesk and Adobe production apps) without paying $600 for it.

I don't need to install 100-200GB of games on a $600 SSD, so...

Well, I have an 80GB SSD and I presently have after 6 months 47GB free out of 74GB. I simply install any games / media files onto the mechanical HDD. My steam directory is H:GamesSteam. From what I remember I simply installed Steam into a different drive when I rebuilt my computer.

Does that answer your questions?

Anyway www.anandtech.com is probably the definative source on information for SSD drives.

I have same case. Its really nice. Only thing I dislike is the front gets dirty quickly due to fans and air ventilation path. No biggie really, just needs cleaning often.

Its quiet and is easy to open/add or remove peices.

I'll give this a shot while I'm still inbetween semesters. Back up my currently installed Steam games and just reinstall Steam from scratch. I just don't recall actually being given the option to choose the installation location for Steam in the several times I've installed it over the past 2-3 years; it always just installed on my boot drive.

I don't care how fast my games load, so installing them on an SSD would be a colossal waste of money I'd only want to use for production apps and project files.

Does this: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1137181

and this: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7710-TDLC-0426

Answer your question?