Definitely worth it for 2TB models at that price difference. 500GB for €25 can't be passed on.

@Phantom. Same here mate. I've only bought Asus for some time now. I always used to buy MSI, but after having config issues with every board I got from them, I switched to Asus and never looked back.

As for AMD. You probably guessed from my Amibay discussions with Kin (I do like to wind him up) where I stand with that. AMD/ATI for graphics cards and Intel for CPUs at the moment for the best price to performance at the moment in my view.
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Well said Dave. (I had MSI in the past...)

I forgot also, ATI for graphics.
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I'm looking at getting a laptop, and have been tempted by the i5 range (likely the 520m).

My sister in law's partner has a watercooled i7-920 with (I think) 12 gig ram (I'd say overkill) and an SSD. Man, it is fast
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Only overkill if you are not going to use its full potential. If he is gaming then it will get more out of the system. However, now the i7 980X is released with its six core and hyperthreading (so 12 threads), it makes even a watercooled 920 look slow.

I never bother with watercooling as the amount of money you would spend on the setup, you could save and upgrade 6 months later to a newer CPU that is faster on air cooling.
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Btw, what do you think about getting immediately 8GB of memory, so I don't have to upgrade later? I just checked, and saw that a GeIL memory kit of 4GB only costs 105€, which is quite cheaper than the G.SKILL I wanted to get. So instead of getting 4GB for 170€, I would get 8GB for 210€.

I lately only used GeIL memory, which I found to be very good and reliable. I can give you the latencies if you want to compare them:

GeIL: CL7 7-7-24 (model GV34GB1333C7DC)
G.SKILL: CL8 8-8-21 (model F3-10600CL8D-4GBHK)

And as I noticed just now, from today on, the G.SKILL memory is out of stock

The GeIL memory is also supported by the mainboard.

EDIT: With some further investigation I read that some people have problems with the GeIL memory. I found now memory from Patriot, which seems to be top, but it's quite expensive, 140€ for 4GB. But I also saw that there's Kingston Hyper X memory, and "only" 219€ for a quad kit (8GB), but it's not on the qualified vendors list of Asus.
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GeIL ram is good, but maybe that motherboard doesn't like certain latency.

Have you looked at Crucial ram? I've used that quite a lot in the past, and it is very good. The Crucial website lets you search by motherboard for recommended and tested ram. And you can order from their website directly with next day special delivery.

For the motherboard you want the following link is all their compatible ram types:

http://www.crucial.com/eu/store/list...=P7P55D-E%20LX

In answer to your question about getting 8GB. Unless you are planning to do video editing, post production or 3D rendering, then I can't see a reason for more than 4GB of ram at the moment. No games require it or really need more than that. And with 2x 2GB ram in the system you would have 2 slots free for more later if you ever did need more.
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I ordered the stuff now, and I only changed few things:

- got the Antec 1200 case
- got the Patriot memory, 4GB
- got the Arctic cooler you mentioned Harrison
- got the Cougar S700 PSU, not the 700CM, which is a bit more expensive but has an 80+ silver certificate (the other has "only" bronze )
- had to change the 5770 Asus card, as Asus cards and many others were out of stock, so I got the Sapphire model (still 5770)

- kept everything else, the CPU, took 3x 2GB HDDs, and the Asus mainboard
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