Help me pick out MOBO and Ram

[Holliday]

I built a computer in 2007, but have not kept up on new technology. I would like to run Planetside on High settings. I have already purchased a video card, an ssd, and a psu. I have picked out a few more things.

Video Card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130812

SSD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820167093

PSU:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817153158

I am pretty set on overclocking the i5 3570k for my CPU:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116504

I am pretty set on this Fractal Case:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811352025

And pretty set on this cooler and second fan for push/pull:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835103099
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835426015

What I am trying to figure out is RAM and Mobo.

A friend has been helping me out and recommended MSI, but others have recommended AS Rock. I personally liked the Intel but a friend pointed out that they aren't that great for overclocking and are over priced.
MSI: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130643
ASRock: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157293
Intel: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813121639

In addition, I understand that as ram goes from 1333 to 1600 and up, so does the CAS latency. So, what is the proper balance between Ram speed and CAS latency? Is there a perfect medium? If so, I need to make sure I get ram that is compatible with the MOBO.

I am willing to spend up to $400 on motherboard and Ram, but if I can get the same performance for less I definitely want to do that.

[Rbstr]

All of your links are broken.

There's no reason to spend more than $200 on the mobo and ram IMO. Unless you plan to SLI today, or want to do some crazy overclocking...I wouldn't spend more than $150 on a motherboard. Getting 8gb of ram shouldn't run over $40-50.

Go with a Z77 board that has as few extra thingies as you need. Do you need 8 SATA6 ports because you have that many SSDs? you'll have to pay up. Otherwise get the cheaper board.
I'm an Asus guy - mostly by luck because it was in my first system build and it was rock solid. I haven't' had problems with them. A "me" exists for every bigger brand. I'd go Asus, ASRock or Gigabyte, in general.

DDR3-1600 is officially supported by your CPU choice, I'd go with that. 8gb in 2x4gb sticks is sufficient and leaves you room to go to 16 later. Unless you plan to keep this thing a very long time 16gb will be plenty. Don't waste too much time on fancy heat spreaders or worrying about CAS latency. These intrigue me, because of the lower voltage and great timings (And Crucial[Micron], along with Samsung, is pretty much the only memory manufacturer that makes it's own memory chips - everyone else pretty just packages Samsung or Micron chips). http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820148656 I would have gone that route if not for a really good deal.

I'll direct you here for what I just recently got. Unfortunately the free RAM deal seems to be done with - that was the only reason I got 16gb.
You don't need to spend as much on a power supply as I did. Something under $100 will be just fine. In my case all of the reviews were raving about that particular model and it was on sale for one day so I went for it.

I'm just waiting on the mobo to get here to put it together. I have the Fractal Design R4 (is that your link?) I quite like it already.

[Holliday]

Fixed links.

[Goku]

I would go for the following mobos:
MSI Z77-GD55. This comes with this free ram.
ASUS P8Z77-V LK
GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-D3H

Personally I would go with the MSI.

[Rbstr]

So looking at your links:
The biggest thing is you don't need anywhere near 850W (75w for the i5, 150w for a 660Ti, You're not gonna use 600 more with mobo/ram/disks). I'd recommend 650 or so.

Go with the MSI Goku linked, it's the best deal (Though the ASRock is similar and has the free memory too). You get a free 8gb module with either. Just add a second one.

[moonshake]

I really like my Gigabyte G1 Sniper 3 mb. I would recommend the Gigabyte motherboard linked above since I've had a very positive experience with Gigabyte and the G1 sniper 3 may be overkill and might not fit in the case as it is an XL.

[Ailos]

About RAM speed and CAS latency: the latency is measured in cycles (e.g. 9-9-9-24 cycles). This also means that if you have a set of CAS 9 modules at DDR3-1333, (which runs at 566 MHz), sticking in a CAS 11 set at DDR3-1866 will actually decrease your latency. (9 cycles of 1.77e-9 seconds versus 11 cycles of 1.07e-9 seconds comes out to 15.93 for -1333 versus 11.77 for -1866). Moral of all this: don't be scared of the CAS numbers increasing for RAM modules rated for high speeds; remember they can always be turned down to run at slower speeds and slimmer cycle timings. Most modern motherboards, including the ones you're looking at, come with something called XMP profiling that automatically runs the memory at its fastest rated speed - just plug them in and everything's pretty much done by itself. Its possible to tweak the timings to be less generous than the automatic profile (and therefore, the latency be smaller), but you won't notice that much of a gain in any program even though you risk a lot of instability. If you plan to overclock, manually tweaking your timings will only make things that much more difficult for you, so I don't recommend doing anything about it until after you've finished tweaking the CPU.

But keep in mind that going from DDR3-1333 to DDR3-2133 will give you a very noticeably smother performance boost in PS2 - it did for me, and if you get a good deal on faster memory, I think it's money well spent. In any case, do not buy anything rated below DDR3-1600.

Asus, ASRock, MSI, Gigabyte are all good brands. I have personal experience with MSI and ASRock and found both to be reliable and decent overclocking platforms (I actually have the Extreme 4 you linked). In your shoes, I picked the ASRock simply because it was all black. (Both the MSI and ASRock come with 8 GB of memory, btw.)

[Holliday]

Thank you all very much!

Ailos- very informative!