Thanks for all the pc build suggestions.  First off, I don't overclock... ever.  So, issues surrounding or that arise from overclocking don't apply here.  If I did I'd have a big enough water cooler installed before I ever even tried; so, no issues there.  Myself, I don't understand why cpu manufacturers unlock cpus enabling them to be oc'ed in the first place.  Just set the effing thing to run at it's max speed and be damned with the overclocking business.  To me it's like chipping a medium performance sports car to perform like it's higher performing brethren.  If it was meant to do it naturally it would.

As far as parts go.  My brother in law (owns a pc shop) had nearly the identically set up system and ran a burn in test on it while he was gone for a couple weeks on vacation.  Air cooled, cpu with no idle time, ram with no idle time and vid card w/no idle time and it ran w/o a blip and no heat issues.  So, I'm pretty confident in the build.  Except for my last 2 boxes(a dell and a gateway); I've been building my own pc's since '94; so, it's not my first time to the rodeo.

•  The M5A97/FX8150 is a must-have.
•  After reading all the comparisons I could and checking the reviews on tomshardware.. the radeon HD7750 is on the must have list also.  For the price I can't justify going up to the 7770.  No draw off the psu other than what the pci-e slot gives and it's about as silent as a vid card can get.  Has 1980x1020 support(max size I go on screen res); and has 3D capability which is a plus as this sometimes doubles as an HTPC and I have a 46" 3D toshiba sitting 2m away from this puter.
•   Heatsink I'm going with is the Coolermaster Hyper 212 EVO which will keep that beastly 8150 as cool as it need be.  If all else fails, I'll temporarily use what I have before.  Duct tape one end of a dryer vent to my window air conditioner and the other end to one of the intake fans on the puter.. a piece of cheesecloth between the two to filter out the stray motes of dust and you have a pc that will actually exhaust cold air.  Not as efficient or inexpensive(in the long run) as water cooling but does the trick in a pinch.  Just the electric bill stays sky high as it's a 25000 btu air conditioner.
•  RAM... have taken good advice and switched to corsair vengeance.  I may stay with the vengeance and go with a lower clock speed to get 8gig sticks instead of 4.  With what we do; the difference is negligible.
•  PSU...  I THINK I have it narrowed down to the Corsair CX600.  Enough to power the system easily.  I'm not and probably won't run crossfire so don't need the extra power.  Drive-wise it'll just be pushing 2 2-TB green seagate hdd's and bd-rw to start.  I might move my system drive to a 120gb ssd sometime after x-mas though.

So, what I'm left with deciding on is the case.  My bro in law uses coolermaster almost exclusively for his shop builds and swears by them.  The one I'm looking at is capable of holding 5 120mm fans, is bottom-mounted psu(something you sort of need with the tall hyper 212 evo heat sink); has all the ports, bays and hookups you'd ever need and looks pretty cool too.  I'll decide sometime between now and Friday.

Priced it all out this morning and it's down to $498.02 w/o the case.  Main price drop is due to the 8150 starting to go down due to the gen2 bulldozers coming out in a couple weeks.  The box I'm on now is starting to get finicky and not liking when I do mean things to it; so, I'm REALLY looking to rebuild sooner rather than waiting for the next gen dozers to come out.  At any rate, the M5A97 will take the next gen w/o missing a beat.