New computer build time? Or hold off?

[LennyLen]

Can I save some money by buying a cheaper motherboard? The one I have listed is something I got as a suggestion from another forum, but I bet it's full of features I'll never use. I really only play games and browse the internet.

It's worth spending a little bit of extra money on a motherboard, as cheaper ones have a much higher fail rate and replacing a motherboard is a pain in the ass. I looked at the specs for that one on the manufacturers site, and it only has basic features so you're not going to be paying for advanced stuff that you won't be using. The reviews for it seem pretty encouraging as well. A few people have mentioned that the instruction manual that comes with it isn't particularly good, so if you're not 100% certain of you're assembly skills and know someone who is, maybe get them to assist.

The SSD - I want one. Is 240GB sufficient for the OS and a handful of games, and is Crucial a decent brand? Can I save a few bucks by going with something smaller here?

240Gb is certainly big enough. I'm using 160Gb of my boot drive, with Win7, a dozen or so games as well as MS Office and most of the Adobe applications plus programming stuff. You could probably get by with 128Gb, but I know for myself I'd rather have space and not need it than need it hand not have it.

I don't have any experience with Crucial drives, but the reviews seem mostly positive. Their failure rate doesn't seem overly high and they do have a 3yr warranty.