I went the bleeding edge route around four years ago, and boy did it bite me in the ass. I held back in only two areas: DDR ram instead of DDR2 and 32 bit Windows, both of which screwed me over in the long run, as it was impossible to upgrade from my 2gb of DDR without redoing the entire set up. Killed any hope I had of playing 4vs4s in Supreme Commander without crashes.

So now I'm here, four years later, desperately in need of an upgrade. My new 1080p monitor only made that all the more obvious.

I'm also now sitting on a free copy of Windows 7 64-bit, and I figured I might as well finally upgrade before installing.

All I need to upgrade is my mobo, CPU, GPU, RAM, and HDD. Honestly, I don't play games as much as I used to (I was an RTS whore until I got Vista, which turned me off to PC games for a long time), and now I use my PC a lot more for multimedia purposes and music/photo editing. My current rig can handle most of what I want to do, like watching 1080p content or messing around in GIMP and Fruity Loops, but it slows to a crawl if I try to do any of those things while simultaneously doing anything else. It also has issues playing what few games I do still play. Left 4 Dead 2 runs like ass, and due to CPU/RAM limitations, I couldn't handle larger matches in Supreme Commander when it came out three years ago! That's arguably my favorite RTS of all time, and I have yet to be able to play it properly.

So long as my new rig can multitask numerous programs with ease, run older games at 1080p, and run newer games at at least 720p, I should be fine.

Here's what I'm currently thinking about buying:

Western Digital 1TB 7200rpm HDD

OCZ Platinum 2 x 2.0gb DDR3 @ 1333

Asus M4A77TD AM3 (from OP)

AMD Athlon II X3 440 Rana 3.0GHz (from OP)

And I'm not sure which GPU to buy. I'm trying to keep this <$400, but as it stands I'm already at $362, so I guess I'll have to get near $500.

Think this'll get me by for what I want to do? Any GPU recommendations? I've always gone with nVidia in the past, but it seems like AMD is the way to go these days. Is the 5770 really necessary for 1080p? I probably won't be playing that many new PC games outside of Portal 2 and maybe Starcraft 2, and neither Valve nor Blizzard have been known to require beefy hardware. Most of my favorites are older RTS games. Think I can get by with the 4850?

And I'll probably grab a Blu-ray drive down the road too, but not til the end of the year at the earliest.  Most of my movies are on Blu-ray, and at the moment I can't watch them in my room since the ps3 is in the family room.

Also, thanks for all the work you put into this thread, Garcian!

Edit:

I'm eyeing this GPU:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102824&cm_re=RADEON_4850-_-14-102-824-_-Product

Seems I may have an extra $100 or so to play around with. I'm thinking of either upgrading to a quad core, upgrading to the 5750, or adding in a new case. My old case has a broken flap.

Leaning towards the quad core, since most of what I'll be doing on the PC is multitasking non-gaming applications or playing games that are pretty CPU intensive (large scale RTS like Supreme Commander).

Or should I maybe upgrade to 8gb of ram? I'm not sure which will benefit me the most.

^ You can always go to 8gb later. 4gb should be enough for modern PC though.

Can't really offer much else advice though. Maybe someone else can recommend a cpu/mobo/video card for you.

Hey man, in my opinion get the quad core processor.  RAM can be upgraded later, and a more expensive video card probably wont matter to you as you don't do a bunch of PC gaming.  That video card will run most new games just fine anyways. 

The better processor will last you longer and give better performance in the long run. 

Out of curiosity, what's the difference between the Caviar Blue and the Caviar Black ? I bought the Black model and it seems good to me. 

Theoretically, that's true.  But knowing me, I'll just sit on my ass for another four years until I finally break down and completely overhaul the machine.  The chances of me just upgrading the ram at some point in the future are pretty slim.  So assuming I won't be doing anything to the PC for another few years, which of those three would benefit me the most in the long run?

Also, I'll probably buy Crysis whenever I ugprade just to see how pretty it looks.  Will I be able to run it at 1080p with the 4850?  Just how crucial is the 5770 for playing games in 1080p?  I know most older games should be fine.

I'm really tempted to upgrade all three, but I know I can't afford it.  =/  Well, I could probably afford to do both the CPU and GPU but not the ram (and vice versa).

Damn dude, thats a tough call.  It really depends on what you will mostly be using your PC for.  For me, I would get the Quad core, but I do a fair bit of processor heavy stuff. 4 Gigs of RAM is plenty for pretty well everything, and RAM is probably the easiest part of your PC to install.  It literally just clicks into place.  Take you maybe 5 minutes to upgrade when you decide to do it. 

If you plan on playing a bit more graphically intense games, I'd get the 5770.  Its a good card for the price and will run most games at high settings.  Crysis I'm not so sure about.  I have a 5850 and I doubt it would even run Crysis at max settings.  That game was designed to eat graphics cards. 

Synopsis:

         Get the quad core if you don't plan on doing too much graphics heavy gaming, or the 5770 if you do.  4Gigs RAM will last you a while and is easily upgraded.

i bought a 5850 too, and i can play crysis at full settings ( my monitor doesnt support 1080p thought)

i bought a 5850 too, and i can play crysis at full settings ( my monitor doesnt support 1080p though)

Actually, thanks to some help from Squilliam last night, I decided to go with a X4 + Gigabyte mobo combo to save some money, thus allowing me to also go with a 5750. Plus the Gigabyte board actually comes with more features than the Asus from the OP (extra PCI slot, two USB 3.0 slots, two Sata 6.0gb slots).

I am now quite please with my new setup, and will probably be ordering in the next few days.