Thanks for the replies.
Did want a Z68, mostly for the Intel SRT as it would be very useful to have games cached to SSD as they are played to speed up load times etc. Was sticking with the larger 60Gb rather than a 30Gb just in case the SRT didn't work out and I can still drop to the 60Gb as a capable boot drive!
fair enough
So a Z68 it is.
Got 8Gb of RAM in the epic Tuesday thing last week so that's ok.
nice.
Motherboards, prefer to avoid Gigabyte as I had a bad experience with 3TB+ boot drives on their supposedly compatible BIOS and would rather switch to UEFI, perhaps a heart over head decision but there you go
Well, if you can afford the Asus Pro or AS Rock, then fair enough.
CPU cooler, was sticking with the retail and relying on Intels cooler, existing case has plenty of cooling so shouldn't be an issue.
the CPU cooler is for overclocking, but you can leave that till later if you don't want to do it. On Sandybridge, overclocking is practically free (except for a cooler
).
I hate power supplies, they've always been the downfall of my builds so I'm always resistant to replacing them!
Which is why it is always better to get a reliable unit sooner rather than later. The OCZ will do I suppose, your system isn't that much stress.
The Antec 620W on offer is a bargain. This is practically the same unit as my HX620, except not modular, and I paid well over twice the price of the Antec a few years ago. And the HX620 was considered one of the best PSU at its time. So loads of quality and power for the money. The problem, it has only 2 PCIE connectors, but should take PCIE molex adapters just fine for xfire 6870.
Bought an ATI 6870 late last year so don't intend to replace it yet unless it struggles with Battlefield 3 at my native res.
It's slightly faster than a HD5850. Can't say for sure, but my HD5850 had no trouble with BF:BC2. Hopefully you're right. In case of a problem, you can stick another one in there, but you'll need a new PSU. Not sure the OCZ can XFire 6870 that well. A 750 XFX is £70(?), with all the PCI connectors needed.
So in fact, it might be a bettter use of money sticking with the OCZ 600W, selling the 6870, and buying a 6950 / 6970 instead of another 6870 and a PSU. 'IF' you have problems with Battlefield. I always prefer a single GPU solution if available. And 'IF' the OCZ can't do xfire 6870. Just a thought.
So among all of these, I would drop to a 2500K, and drop the Caviar Black for a standard 1TB drive (Samsung or Seagate). Dont bother with the SATA3 drives for speed, it's only a compatibility thing really, and doesn't mean the drives are faster.
) 
