I've heard AMD has had it's hardware compatibility problems in the past. Not sure where it stands now. Also, performance of their i5/i7 challengers is not upto the mark.
Sounds as though it'll be best to stick with Intel then. Are there performance gains to be had by pairing Intel with Nvidia, or doesn't it make much difference whether you use an Nvidia or an AMD with an Intel processor?
One other thing - I don't do editing or photo stuff or anything like that; I only use my system for gaming/surfing/watching movies/listening to music, so would an i5 suit me or should I push for an i7 if possible? The difference in price is noticeable. If an i5 would suit, could you make a mobo/CPU suggestion?
Ideally, the mobo will have built in wifi and lots of USB ports, but the latter isn't as important as I already have a USB PCI card. Budget of around ?100 or less for the mobo and around ?200 or less for the CPU (the closer to ?150 the better). DDR3 RAM seems dirt cheap at the moment, so I'll probably just stick with Corsair. I have an Audigy 4 soundcard, so I'll just add that to the new configuration. Lastly, my PSU is a Corsair TX650v2 - should that be sufficient power for the new configuration and beyond? After the mobo/CPU my next upgrade will be a GPU but not for a while.
My case is something like this:
so it ain't small.