Are these Micro Center AMD CPU/MOBO deal any good?

I'm putting together a media server for my room and want to know what your input on these Micro Center AMD cpu/mobo deals?

http://www.microcenter.com/specials/promotions/AMDbundlePROMO.html


PROCESSORS

Phenom™ II X2 560 Black Edition
Phenom™ II X4 840
Phenom™ II X4 965 Black Edition


Need help picking out Processor and MOBO. My budget is $150 but if one of those free boards will work then saving money is always good. I was thinking of using stock cpu cooler but i can pick up the hyper 212+ that is on sale if over any of these board are good for Over clocking.

thanks

Its an media server. You can run that with a single core with great performance. You need fast hard drives and network connection more than CPU horsepower really.

I would get a dual core and some cheap mobo, not bother overclocking or getting a better cooler and putting that money in a good hard drive.

I would get an X4 for sure, for your price piont why not, and its only 10 bucks more, though earthdog is right you do not need alot pf CPU to video playabck

IMO the 840 would prolly work, and if you get a hyper 212 it should clock decently, though i wonder if you will need it for video playback honestly... my 955 can run 1080p and do lots of background tasks without hicup

so what free board do you guys sugguest?

What are the odds of my unlocking the x2 560 to 4 cores and do you think any of these free mobo will do the unlocking?

thanks

You will have to read up on them to see fi they unlock, i would say good odds to unlock cores, but it is NOT A GUARANTEE so dont try to save 10 bucks COUNTING on the 2 extra cores... Thats why i recommended the 840, its 10 bucks.... as far as boards, look for SATA ports ot fit your HDD needs, and enough PCI for your GPU needs or sound card needs if your going that direction, I like my biostar just fine, its not nessecarily best for you though...

If it were me i would go with the Phenom™ II X4 840 and the ASUS M4A87TD for 159.99, its a lil over budget but you get 6 SATA 6Gb/s ports and it will handle DDR3 1600. It is also AM3 so you could upgrade to a Phenom II X6 down the road, it only has 1 PCI 16x slot for your GPU, keep that in mind.

For 10 bucks more you get the ASUS M4A88TD-V EVO wich adds another pci 16x slot and onboard graphics in the form of a radeon 4250 which if you dont alreadys have a gpu could make things cheaper.

what you guys think of the x840 and biostart A770E3 AM3. got pretty good reviews on newegg.

The board has to have the ability to unlock the cores and not all have them. Im not sure which ones do, sorry.

Again, look at yourself first and your needs. Are you overclocking? No? So why get anything better than what you need for a board (unless like BBen says you want to upgrade them in the future). This is media server and barely has to run to work, ya know?