Case: Seems a bit over-the-top. My experience is that I never really "show off" my computer. Unless things are actually broken, I've never had a benefit to more than very internal usability measures like removable hard-drive cages. (I have
this right now.)
PSU: I have the 550 version from corsair. No complaints, works fine.
RAM: I'd hunt up some benchmarks with your motherboard and check whether DDR3 is worth it vs. DDR2. I decided it wasn't when I built my computer about a year ago, but the motherboard supports both.
Motherboard: I got
this one, so far no real complaints against Gigabyte aside from the tacky GUI design of their tweaker tools which is rampant in certain groups of manufacturers. A few things to ponder:
- Do you really need IDE support as opposed to SATA-only? Answer's probably yes if your old comp has any IDE drives.
- Do you really need HMDI on the motherboard? Would a future video card upgrade include it?
CD/DVD: I paid a bit more and got a lightscribe burner, and I'm actually pretty happy I did. I don't burn things very often at all (once at month at most), but it's really nice to be able to label them neatly and permanently, especially if it's so I can give them to other people.
CPU: I don't have a strong AMD vs. Intel stance, I've built systems with one and then the other. But last I heard (and I may be out-of-date) the conventional wisdom was that the money you saved with AMD was partly countered by needing to buy a beefier heatsink/fan combo.