I honestly don’t need a 1 TB drive 
I haven’t really considered any Nvidia cards, can you recommend some that are in the same price class? 
What about that ASUS mainboard i mentioned?
The GTX560Ti is about the same price and performs about the same as a 6950. They overclock well too.
That’s bad advice regarding the SATA problems imo. Most shops now have the new revisions of the motherboards so it’s been fixed and if they haven’t just use the two SATAIII connections until you receive a replacement.
The only way to be sure it’s a new revision is to contact the shop directly to confirm they are new. I know ebuyer removed all the Sandybridge range when the news arrived and have only just recently started selling them again so I assume they have received the fixed motherboards.
To put it in perspective the problem only affects a small number of boards, it’s not every one at all, it is a degradation that happens over an extended period. You aren’t going to plug in a SATA drive and all of sudden it stops working. If that happens the board was faulty anyway.
EDIT - There are two chipsets for 1155 board - P67 and H67. P67 has overclocking features and if you are getting a GPU anyway it worth getting. H67 enables onboard GPU facility however does not provide extensive overclocking abilities.
Whatever board you choose be sure to register it with the manufacturer and arrange a replacement if it is faulty. I know ASUS are performing same day swaps i.e. the delivery guy will take your old one and give you your new one at the same time, you don’t need to send them the board back first and wait for ages.
x58 is expensive and only really worth it if you want a multi-GPU set up. Otherwise the price and performance of Sandybridge is much better.
Also the motherboard i originally posted doesn’t have two ports for graphics cards i don’t think i need it… Thanks GuitarJim! the MSI GTX560Ti looks good! 
does it have HDMI output tho?
Yes the 560 has hdmi output. You are welcome!
I still recommend going for a different manufacturer as I have had issues with MSI in the past. Asus or gigabyte would be a better idea.
Just make sure the motherboard you get is the B3 stepping (Only MSI have them right now, I think)
Nope Asus certainly have them now too.
The site where i’ll be buying the parts from says the 560 is by MSI, is that right?
Tennisball: thats the size of the motherboard you’re talking about, right?
No B3 stepping is to do with the revision of the chipset/chips. B3 is latest revision of the P67 and H67 chipsets.
The GTX560 is designed by Nvidia who sell the license to build the GPU’s to various manufacturers such as MSI, Gigabyte, Sapphire etc. Just go for whatever is the cheapest option as it makes little difference between them.
If you provide a link to the GPU you are looking at I can check it out for you if you like.
The SATA controller problem is already gone. Everybody is selling the new B3 stepping of the boards(which are fixed) and also x58 is a lot more expensive
Yep, that’s the one I would like to go for if I had the money for a new computer . Those cards are supposedly good for overclocking further too.
Okay, then i’ll go for that 
only question then is; what motherboard should i pick? Obviously it needs to fit with the cabinet and have the same socket as the processor
Well the case you are looking at takes both ATX and M-ATX boards. Personally I would go for the Asus P8P67 Pro (makes sure it’s the B3 revision) but it is almost double what you were going to pay for the MSI board.
The main thing is it’s P67 and revision 3.
I think i’ll go for that MSI board, it is P67, and i just found out it was revision 3
sorry for bumping, but this is what i finally went with in the end:
