ok some facts that i gatherd from the admin at work.
MSI 6% failure rate on all motherboards - 3% on video cards. RMA with them is a pain in hte butt. also the PCB that msi uses and the copper they use have high resistance there for more heat and less speed.
Gigabyte 16% failure overall products. but the quality with what they make it with is great. RMA. Pain in the butt.
Asus lower than 2% failure rate on all products. Great RMA terms. 3 year warranty's rock solid compoents.
ECS, ASrock, and thoes cheap companies. you get what you pay for. there quality is not that good. there rma's are bad
as for mem there are many good companies but i would personaly find one that will stand behind there product and someone that knows what they are doing (someone who has been in the business for a while).
personaly i like kingston and Corsair, OCZ, Geil, and samsung are great makers too. i tipicaly found that if you want to over clock at all the Corsair is good because it can take a lot of voltage thrown at it.
and yea processer. i would go with an amd 3500. its overall good. it can oc great. and just stock its fast.
and well video. thats a tough onen because of many people that are die hard fans. but from waht i have noticed building many many gamer and CAD systems at work. the Nvidia products seem to run a little faster for the same ati card compared to price.
also i find that ATI is very hot doing nothing. there is a lot of heat made from that card. and if you go with an nvidia card you can always go SLI.
but yea thats my 2 cents