Kerplunk!

That i7 chip is the epicenter of my right wing extremism.

hahaha, brilliant. I need to rewatch Aliens again.

On topic, good stuff. Just the GPU is bit weak compared to the rest of the components. What is the main purpose of the machine, do you plan doing some video-editing or CPU rendering or working with MathLab...? i mean anything CPU-intensive, what would justify that 3770.... if you bought it mainly for gaming, you would be better with weaker CPU (i5 3570) and stronger GPU... 

EDIT: Oh, looking at the OP again, i somehow skipped the Hackintosh part before. I suppose the 7770s are mounted into MacPros, therefore the choice of this GPU.... 

I went with the stronger CPU and weaker GPU for my rig 4 years ago (Phenom II X4 955 BE and the 260 GTX) and have no regrets. Only until last year have I had to turn down some of the higher graphics settings. 

When I ordered everything I got a low profile Cooler Master heatsink, but one of the cheap plastic mounting clips broke when I popped it through the board. After considering what I would do, I just put the stock one in and sent the broken one back for a refund. Seems like the temps are cool idling at around 35 Celsius, and that's lower than what I saw reported. I can't max out this CPU no matter what I throw at it, so I don't even see the need to overclock or generate higher heat levels at this point. I can probably hold off on any cooling solutions for now. The passmark burn in test went good too.

It would be gauche for me to discuss money on the internet.

Build your own. Any problems you can find lots of help right here. The part where you have to be the most careful is when you drop in the chip. You don't want to bend any of those tiny pins. 

In all honesty, I doubt he wants to bend anything. So, use logic, use common sense, use what you have .....but don't use force.

And good luck on your build should you go that route.

nononononononononono

Just make sure you have plenty of DRINKING alcohol if you screw up ....  

I wrote a blog article about that some time ago that may help you.

http://kona0197.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/how-to-build-a-computer-step-by-step/

kryo....I wouldn't ever be looking at an i5 .... for FSX it needs to be as seriously top-end as you can get.  It's a 32bit proggy so you have to fool it into using more ram ...and relocating core loading away from the first core to help with on-going number crunching.

Mine's a first-gen i7 920 2.67GHz running 12gig in 6 banks of 'paired' triple-channel 12800 DDR3 ...and the GPU is an ASUS GTX590 with 3gig of GDDR5.

It'll run Res Evil 5 at 120 fps without a sneeze ...but in FSX at times I'm lucky to get a tenth of that...

Depending 'where you are' you can get 60 or 70 fps but if you're within a detailed airport [where you can recognize car makes and models...the detail is that fine] mapping square kms of topography in real time...and AI flight paths as well as your own ...GPS...radar....animations...specular shine...self-shading....and when you see them the stars are in the right places.... realtime weather from real weather.....all in a long-in-the-tooth proggy being replaced by MS with a 'toy' version that's more 'game' than sim.

The skinning for the aircraft is significantly more complex than a GUI as it seems just about every model does it differently...and the only saving grace is much of the bigger stuff uses DTX5 compression otherwise the image files are huge.

The rest of the world uses it because it is the best flight simulator available, and yes, it's the software....it cannot be made 'properly' multi-processor aware and still hits ram limits [not 64bit].... and it comes from an era when GPUs were considerably weaker than those available today.

NOTHING can genuinely run it maxed out...everything is a compromise....