are these good choices for my first build?

[iAmCodeMonkey]

I have made some changes to my gaming rig build, specifically the processor and motherboard vendor, as seen below...

AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition 3.00Ghz (Socket AM2+)
ASUS Crosshair II Formula nForce 780a SLi (Socket AM2+)
Crucial Ballistix 800Mhz Dual Channel DDR2 8Gb (PC3-1066)

I have one important question for you guys...

Just to be on the safe side, has ASUS quality dropped to a point that I may get a "bad" board? or is it just bad luck when someone complains about problems? I have already ordered the processor and motherboard btw.

I am not a noob at all when it comes to hardware, so you will not see me complain of issues after making a noobish mistake lol.

 

[QuietIce]

The only "drop" in ASUS quality, IMO, is the original 4+1 boards - a lot of those had serious under-volting problems (vDroop & vDrop). I'm a real ASUS fan and I was not very happy with my M3A78-T at all. For me it wasn't so bad (I run SETI so my rig is under load 24/7 - so as long as the voltage is constant at load I don't care) but for most people out there those low-voltage issues were not pretty.

IIRC the Crosshair II is one of the older boards and should be fine. I think it has dual-plane (8+2) power anyway and those boards have never been a problem.

I do wonder why you picked the components you have. The Crosshair II (at least at Newegg) is more expensive than the Crosshair III, which almost offsets the cost of a 955BE instead of the 940BE. Have you looked into that option ...?

 

[iAmCodeMonkey]

I am choosing the Crosshair II over the Crosshair III because I want to use Nvidia graphic cards in this system. I have already purchased the motherboard and CPU online (not from newegg, however), and when I did the math, this setup came out to be slightly cheaper than the Crosshair III AM3 board (the place where I ordered my components listed the Crosshair II for less than the Crosshair III), and I am not a fan of ATi graphics cards.

 

[trents]

In your sig I noticed this line: Crucial Ballistix 800Mhz Dual Channel DDR2 8Gb (PC3-1066)

Huh? Did you mean PC2-6400?



I would not buy Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800. They had a lot of bad batches with that ram. I owned some and had to RMA it. It was not stable at stated speeds and voltages. Got to looking around on various forums and many were having the same problem. Like me, a lot of people got them on a huge discount from Tiger Direct. We found out why the price was so good.