Quote Originally Posted by 'Owltoid',index.php?page=Thread&postID=171509#post 171509
Probably the biggest piece of advice that I ignored was from Freddie (Hotkeynet) and I could come to regret it in a year.
I think you'll feel fine. You made good choices and $1800 isn't that much more than what I suggested considering that you're getting more RAM and it's being built for you. I didn't know you wanted more than 16 GB. That's a reason for going with i7 that I didn't take into account. My way isn't necessarily better -- it's just a different choice. My way you buy a new PC every two years and spend less each time. Your way you rely on the computer longer and spend more each time. Both ways have advantages but if you wanted 24 GB, that settles it. Don't worry.

-I could have stuck with the default 420W power supply but after reading the thread I thought namebrand was important in this category. Though I don't think I'll need all 650, I also don't think it's total overkill.
Good choice. Quality probably varies more with power supplies than any other component, and Corsair is great. 650 watts is fine.

With 12GB currently, and upgradeable to 24GB, I believe that my RAM needs will be met for at least 4-5 years before becoming much less than ideal. Also, and I may be incorrect with this thought process, but since i7 is new I'm hoping that right before they transition to a new architecture I can get the latest version. If that type of upgrade is possible, then my processor needs will be met for a long time (with upgrade in a few years).
I think you're right on both points. Just yesterday Intel introduced the E8700 which will probably turn out to be one of the last (if not the very last) CPUs from the previous architecture. In the same way, two years from now, Intel will probably be introducing the last i7's built on a smaller 32 nm. And most likely you'll be able to plug it into this motherboard.

MSI X58 Platinum Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Mainboard Triple-Channel DDR3/1600 SATA RAID w/ eSATA,Dual GbLAN,USB2.0,IEEE1394a,&7.1Audio
-I probably should have done more comparisons and asked more questions on my selection of the motherboard. However, between this mobo and the ASUS, Newegg had negative reviews on the ASUS which left the MSI the winner. Hopefully the mobo will be decent for at least a few years and I didn't skip any glaring bottleneck.
I've had a lot of success relying on Newegg reviews. I've come to place a lot of trust in them (when there are a lot of them for a given product).

I'm a bit concerned with it being 896MB instead of 1G+ but since I don't really know what those numbers mean then I hope I can't tell the difference
1 GB means 1024 MB so the difference is 1024 - 896 = 128. If you ran a lot of benchmarks like the review webs sites do, you'd notice that a similar card with the larger DRAM size would run certain games slightly faster. A lot of games wouldn't be affected at all. But since you won't be running benchmarks you won't notice anything.