I chose the 500gig hdd cause I really don't need alot of space for right now, can always upgrade later. I've got the 60gig ssd in my laptop I can put in the pc for games, but not alot can fit on it, mostly WoW and SWtOR. Gonna get Diablo 3 and many other games after that I figured I can always install on the main hdd or a new one later. I've got an external for backup/storage I'm using now that's 500gigs and the one hdd in my laptop is a 300gig I don't even use up. I'd like to start learning to record while in games and sharing, which is why I figured I'd grab the i7, saw you post in another thread that it's better for that than the i5 and I'm lookin at a futureproof pc or one that'll last me a while. Atleast another 3-4 years. Main question now is still, is buying refurbished hardware better than buying new parts and especially for that price it's listed at now? To save a few bucks, can you recommend a really good motherboard if I opt to grab an i5 cpu instead tho?