Nice system so far....
Things to look for...
Powersuply... dont go lower than 450 watts... i dont worry about brand... but thermaltake/antec will help to keep heat problems away, as well as they are very silent.
case... i like antec for noise reasons... they have some lovely designs too. thermaltake has some lovely designs too as well as some of the aluminium cases on the market.
2-4 gig memory, i feel is too much initially. go for 1 gig... if you have a dual memory motherboard, your DDR400 will run at 800 if you have 2 x 512 mb dims
Since you will be building your computer yourself, DONT get a SATA hard drive... stick to IDE its a mission to install windows onto it.
Dont bother with a cd writer... just get a DVD writer from the start. the lightscribe dvd writers are now available... so you can label your dvd's in the writer already. no markers neede to write on it.
IF you do get a stiffy drive (not that i can immagine why), rather get on with built in card reader. it takes the same space, is a fraction more expensive and makes cameras a breeze.
since you building the co,puter yourself... DONT put in water cooling... its overrated, and dual core processors are not known for heat problems in anycase... no matter what they say about the non-conductive fluid in the water coolers... it SHORTS out MOTHERBARDS when it leaks... and they DONT have warantees on leaks, and they void the warantees on the rest of your computer in case of a leak or even a airlock (just like with a radiator, it wil cause your pc to overheat if there is a single bubble in it.)
hmmm what else... motherboard should have the following...
32x PCI xpress (before anyone jumps on me because there is no such thing... what i mean is... BOTH pci xpress slots run at 16x, so when you have 2 cards in it performs at 32x. normal motherboards only run at 16 max... 2x8 speed...
dual channel ddr slots (this makes your memory run twice the speed when you have 2 of the same modules)
i can say it should have SATA. its not a must now, but will be with future operating systems (after win 64)
the rest is standard on most boards.
nice graphics card...
if you are worried about heat issues... then check out the super silent antec range of fans... also plan how you want your airflow to be... ie. in through the front, out the back, or in through the side and out the back and front (this one works well with more than 2 hard drives )
