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What do you think? trying to keep it in a decent range for pricing but still be fast. I want to pick up a second video card later and I also have a dvd drive and hard drive to throw in for storage.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811146068 - NZXT Phantom Full Tower case

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131759 - ASUS Maximus IV Gene-Z LGA 1155 Intel Z68

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130661 - GeForce GTX 560 (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817703030 - PC Power and Cooling Silencer 760W High Performance 80PLUS Silver SLI CrossFire ready Power Supply

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115073 - Intel Core i5-2500 Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227706 - OCZ Vertex 3 VTX3-25SAT3-120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231428 - G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118223 - ZALMAN CNPS9500A-LED 92mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler

the 2500k is out of stock, and from what I understand I don't really need it.

i'm open to criticism, but be gentle! haven't built a pc in almost 10 years. thanks!

would it be easier if i just posted what the parts are instead of links to them?

I'm an unabashed AMD fanboy so naturally I have a bias in that regard. Everything else looks like the basis of a solid build. I'd reccomend more storage but I assume you can wait until hard drive prices stabilize a bit due to the flooding issues and what not.

I was about to suggest a different case but I thought the Phantom was far more expensive. At that price it seems like a great pickup.

The 2500k allows overclocking, and easy overclocking at that. if it's something you'd consider, I'd wait for it to come back into stock.

I don't know enough about intel chipsets to appraise that board very well, but I noticed that "2 (single at x16, dual at x8)" - you might want to consider a board that allows dual at x16 if you're considering running multiple video cards.

He does not need a dual 16x board.The only way you can get dual 16x pcie slots on z68/p68 board is if it has a nforce 200 chip on it.
Dual 8xSlots Do not bottleneck current video cards.He will be Hunky dory adding another card down the road:)

You really want a GeForce GTX560Ti instead of that GeForce GTX560. Don't let the evil marketing geniuses' intentionally-confusing product naming claim another victim. This hot-clocked Zotac AMP! ZT-50302-10M looks like a good performer for $230 -30MIR. You might get even better bang for your buck with a Radeon HD6950 for the same price.

I agree that your motherboard choice is fine and that you should wait for the -K processor.

thanks for the input guys, it's appreciated!

I would echo what everyone else has said but add that I would research a bit on the OCZ SSD. Unless that the latest firmware has improved stability I wouldn't touch one with a 10 foot pole. Intel, Crucial or Samsung on the SSD would be my choices.