Wow man, thats rough.  Gonna up the cost of your PC quite a bit buying from Best Buy.  Is there not a local electronics retailer like NCIX nearby?  I guess if you have to buy from Best Buy then thats the way it goes.

Yea, thats a good sandy bridge processor, and the i5's are much more reasonably priced. 

I'm sure Best Buy will get some faster motherboards in stock as the 1155 chipset becomes more popular.  Just keep checking every few weeks.  I was thinking something like this one.

Actually man i just found out today that i can open a checking account when i turn 16 and with parental consent (which i also have) i can get a debit card so now when i get the cash i can definitely get everything off newegg now, my new build goes like this

Asus P8P67 motherboard

EVGA GTX 570

I5 sandy bridge 2500k 3.3ghz which ill probably overclock to a max of 4.5ghz even if it can go a little higher i just want to be safe

Cooler master hyper 212 cpu cooler

750 watt corsair power supply

same ram different brand

500gb seagate HDD

Corsair 600t special white edition case

Same WIFI card and all the other nonsignifant stuff like windows 7, kaspersky antivirus, Full hd LED monitor 5ms refresh rate

And thats about $1550 and this time around i feel very confident with the build but again advice is advice so please provide some if you have any.

Looks solid to me.  I'm not sure why you would bother overclocking that CPU other than to simply say you did it?  Most programs you wouldnt even notice a difference after OC'ing unless you are running some pretty CPU heavy shit.  For most programs the speed limiting factor is how fast the cpu can grab data from the hard drive, which you can't do much about short of buying an expensive SSD.  But if you wanna OC, then make sure you have a program like HWMonitor to keep an eye on your temps.

That is a very expensive case.  It looks nice, but it's pricey.  It's a matter of personal preference, but I bought the $90 Lian Li aluminum case, and it is a very nice case.  Obviously you'll have the case for a long time, and probably multiple builds, so get something you like that is well built (That Corsair looks good imo).

If you are a student, look into Microsofts MSDNAA program, they offer huge discounts on Windows 7. 

Also, I wouldnt bother paying for an antivirus.  Kaspersky is supposed to be good, but so are Microsoft Security Essentials and MalwareBytes.  Just use those two programs and you should be good to go, no need to pay a yearly subscription fee.

Also, this may not be an issue depending on where you live, but you may want to look into getting some kind of power protection.  I live in an old building and the power isn't very consistent, so I bought a UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) for $200.  It cleans the power going to my computer, making it a nice even 120V, and if the power goes out I have about 30 minutes of battery back up to save my work and shut off my computer.  It also completely prevents power fluctuations from reaching the computer.  You probably dont need something like this now, but when you move out/go to school you may end up renting a place in an older building and need something like that.  Or just get a surge protector power bar =P. 

Just make sure to use some form of power protection, you don't want to end up with a $1500 paper weight.

I agree with the first statement in this quote, but the second one is quite a stretch...

While hard drive performance is important for booting and program loading times, it's definitely not the limiting factor for most programs. For program loading times, it doesn't even matter as much as it used to, higher RAM sizes allow the OS to cache a lot of stuff into memory...

Hard drive performance might be the limiting factor when dealing with huge files, for example, video editing. Certainly not for games (GPU is usually the limit), productivity software (the user is usally the limit) or Web browsing (Internet connection is usually the limit) which is what most people spend time doing.

Guys, do you still think crossfire should be avoidable?

I do have a gygabite ga 880gm mother with an ATI Radeon 5750 1 gb ddr5 and I was planning on buying another one to enhance my gaming as I am looking foward to enjoy the most out of The Witcher 2.

What do you say?

Ah, ya i should have been more specific.  I was referring to the program loading and boot times, I just worded it very poorly.  When I was younger, getting a new processor typically made the biggest difference in the load times of my favortie games, so i tend to think of that when thinking of practical differences made by a new CPU.  Obviously this is not true any more.

As you say, once a program is open, the CPU is typically no longer the bottleneck.  But disc seek times are still a major factor when loading a program for the first time, even with the larger cache line sizes and improved seeking algorithms.  However, as you say, once a program has been opened, opening it a second time is much faster due to the cached data.

@pariz

I don't have a crossfire setup, so I'm not an expert on the matter.  I do know that it doesn't scale particularly well, so buying a new 5750 will only give about 50% increase in performance.  You should also consider your power supply, you don't want to cook it.  Most people recommend a 750W PS if you are running 2 high end graphics cards.

It comes down to a price/performance issue.  If you can get another 5750 for cheap, then its probably worth it.   Otherwise you may be better off buying a more powerful card and selling your 5750. 

For example, according to Passmark, a 5750 scores a benchmark of 1500.  Theoretically, two 5750's in crossfire would score around 2300-2400 (being generous), whereas a single 5850 scores 2500.  Sapphire is still making the 5850 (they relaunched the model) and is selling them for around $150.

Personally, I'd probably buy the 5850 and sell the 5750. 

Are you sure that your motherboard supports Crossfire? Two PCI-E 16x (or 8x) slots?

If so then you could CF them, though it might be worth it if you can find a low cost card to pair it with. You should really check out CF scores of two 5750's and see how they compare to other single cards price/performance, before deciding to CF. Your Power Supply should also be relatively decent. 

Before I was running 2 x GTX 260's in SLI on a 500W Antec PSU, which I think was just barely enough for it. Now I'm running 2 x ATI 6950's (unlocked to 6970's) in Crossfire on a 850W Silverstone PSU. I'm not sure how much power the 5750's use though?

Could someone please explain to me what the pros and cons are for a RAID setup and would it be something worth looking into doing.  The information I find on some of the sites seem to be more of how the setup works and the what each drive would do under each different RAID setup.  

What is the best setup?  

What will give me the highest performance boost.  What would that cost me in reliability?

Just kinda curoous if anyone on here has experience with them and would share them with me. 

Thanks guys for your answers.

I gave it a second thought after your advise and I will try to sell my card and buy a ATi 6850 in the following days.

CPU - Either an i7 or a high end i5. A top end AMD quad core might be fine, but my personal recommendation is for an Intel. RAM - DDR3 is the fastest RAM currently available. I'd go for at least 6-8GB for future-proofing. GPU - You'll need DX11 for games in the next few years, so your current choice is only ATI. Go for 5870 if your screen is under 1920x1200, 5970 if it's bigger. HDD - Forget SCSI. Seriously. Get a 160GB SSD (Intel or one with an Indilinx controller) for your C drive and get a 2TB HDD for your D drive to hold all your files. videos, etc. PSU - Go for a quality brand of at least 850W. That should keep you running sweet for years. If you're going for the 5970 or are likely to go Crossfire or SLI on future GPUs later, I'd probably stretch to 1000W. Make sure it's a quality brand.And using a free duplicate file finder can also be good for PC health.

OR

Processor Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge-based 3.3 GHz CPU Cooling system Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler Cooling system 2 x Kingwin CF-012LB 120 mm Case Fan Cooling system 2 x Cooler Master R4-L2R-20AC-GP 120 mm Motherboard Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3-iSSD LGA 1155 Motherboard w/ 20 GB SSD RAM G.Skill Ripjaws 8 GB DDR3-1333 Kit (2 x 4 GB) Graphics Card 2 x Galaxy 58NLH5HS3PXZ GeForce GTX 580 1.5 GB Hard Drive OCZ Agility 3 120 GB Hard Drive Samsung SpinPoint F4 HD204UI 2 TB 7200 RPM 3.5" Hard Drive Case Rosewill Future Mid-Tower Power Supply Corsair TX950 950 W Power Supply DVD Burner LG 12x WH12LS30 Blu-ray Burner.