First Time Build Could Use Some Advice

[salaam]

Hi this is my first time both on these forums and building my own PC. I've been going through the different build recommendations both here and at other sites. What I want is a computer that will last me a good while, say 4 years while playing games with the settings turned up to a pretty good level. For a budget I'm thinking between $700 and $900, so the budget build on these forums looks perfect for me pricewise, but I am unsure if the performance will be as high as I'd like, and also if it will last as long as I'd like.

Here's the build:

Case:
Antec Three Hundred + BP430 Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 430W Power Supply

Motherboard:
MSI 870A-G55 AM3 AMD 770 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD

CPU:
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz

Ram:
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)

GPU:
ZOTAC AMP! ZT-40502-10L GeForce GTS 450 (Fermi) 1GB

Hard Drive:
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s

Optical Drive:
ASUS Black DVD Burner

Operating System:
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

The description says there is plenty of room for upgrades. Will this enable me to extend the life of the computer to 4 or 5 years while still keeping the settings on games relatively high? If not, which of the Step Above rigs do you think would better suit my purposes?

Thanks for the help.

Salaam

[swishahouse]

Hey Salaam,

The plenty of room for upgrades only really matters if your going to have multiple drives, but either the antec 300 is a great case to go with and easy to upgrade. The one thing I can recommend is going to the msi website, finding your motherboard, and looking at the test plan which will tell you what ram it is compatible with. Do this with the ram for the motherboard as well. I'm personally a big fan of intel chips over amd.

Best of luck,

Liam

[salaam]

Thanks for helping me out Liam.

I looked into the Intel Sandybridge CPUs and decided that's the way to go. So I switched around a few things to accommodate that.

Here's what I'm thinking:

Case:
Antec Three Hundred + BP430 Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 430W Power Supply

PSU:
CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W

Motherboard:
MSI P67A-C43 (B3) LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX

CPU:
Intel Core i3-2100 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz 2 x 256KB L2 Cache 3MB L3 Cache LGA 1155 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor

Ram:
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)

GPU:
Radeon 6950

Hard Drive:
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s

Optical Drive:
ASUS Black DVD Burner

Operating System:
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

That comes to a total of ~$850, within my budget. I looked into the RAM on the motherboard and it seems to be compatible with what I have listed. Any thoughts?

[RickyTick]

I think it looks like a great build. It would be even better if you could step up the video card to either a Radeon 6950 or a GeForce GTX560Ti.