Budget Build - Please check

[LegacyOne]

As its within your budget you could drop the X4 955 and go with the X4 940 which is DDR2 only.

[Whiternoise]

oh and, how much can you o/c before you need a different-than-stock cooler?

It depends on a variety of factors, not least of which is how good the airflow in your case is generally. With good cable management, you can squeeze a few hundred more MHz without having to get a new cooler. It's also slightly dependent on things like memory and motherboard, but that's generally not so much of an issue - it comes into play with regards to maximum overclock rather than temperature relations.

Basically, your mileage may vary, so the best bet is to see how far you can push it whilst staying within a decent temperature range - under 70 degrees load for long periods is preferable for me, but some people happily chug along at 80 or even 90. The benefit of the aftermarket cooler (as you know) is that you can push harder whilst keeping the temperatures lower.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What do people think about thiss cpu?
is it like a x4 955 but with 3 cores? so would there be any real difference in performance (seeing as im not encoding videos etc)

i would be willing to o/c a bit, since it seems to be very easy, so should I just get the x3 720 and o/c it a bit?

thanks

TBH,the Phenom II X4 955BE is fast enough at stock for most games anyway and IMHO will be a sound investment for a few years. It has both a clockspeed advantage over the X3 720 which means it will be faster in games which do not support multiple cores and an extra core meaning it will be faster in games which do support multiple cores. If you can get the X3 720 for under £100 it would be worth it but Scan have had the X4 955BE closer to £140 a few times in the last week or two and you would need to get an aftermarket heatsink to overclock the X3 720.

Also the Phenom II X4 900 series processors come with a better heatsink too.