[huntbytnkbel]

ok, ive decided what im getting, and have already started ordering.

I decided to go with a Xeon E3110. It is exactly the same chip as the Core 2 Duo E8400, but with a slightly different voltage setting. I did my research, and confirmed on several sites that any board that will take the C2D Wolfdale will also take the Xeon Wolfdale. I'm definetly commited on this one, since it is already sitting on my desk.

4G DDR2 G.Skill memory, PC2 6400 800 MHz. The board supports 8G at 1200MHz, and the G.Skill is relativly cheap, (under $100 with shipping) so I will upgrade that at a later time.

Mother Board is going to be the 780i. As stated before, its more future-proof.

And of course the single 8800GT OC. Its cheap, small, and (from what I have read on several sites) will out perform all others, with the exception of the GTX and ULTRA. For the price, I may just do a 3 way SLI setup with 8800s before too long.

As far as the hard drive goes, I'm really cutting a corner here. only gonna run a single 250G 7200rpm drive for now. It gives me plenty of space for dual booting XP 64 (for daily running) and Vista 64 (for DX10 games). I don't need any storage space, as I have a TB of desktop storage I use for all my backups/videos/anime.

As far as calling Dell, the only systems they have that will compare with mine are the XPSs... The "cheapest" one they have is XPS 630. I just specked one out as closely to mine as I could, and it was almost $500 more then my machine, with only a year warrenty. Go to the good warrenty, you talking $750 more then mine. That is also with the Q6600 clocked at 2.4GHz. Quad core sounds nice on paper, and it certainly is a popular buzz word, but I haven't seen a single game yet that is coded to take advantage of all 4 cores. Basically, if you slap a Q6600 into one system, and an E8400/E3110 into another, with identical hardware, the E8400/E3110 will outperform the other because of the clock speed. To get 3GHz out of that dell, you have to upgrade to the Extreme QX6850, (quad core/3GHz) and tack $970 bucks onto the price. By building my own system, I have maximum upgradeability options, and can pick exactly what I want right now.

Dont get me wrong. I reccomend Dell to all my clients. For the average user, they are awesome. And if I was getting a laptop, I would save up 7Gs, and get a top of the line XPS. But since I consider myself a "power user" and this is a budget gaming rig that will upgraded for years to come, I couldn't justify doing anything besides building a cusom rig.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, my laptop, with a 1.73 GHz Centrino Duo, 2G 667MHz memory, and a Geforce GO 7600 256M dedicated, can run Crysis. I only get 15-20 FPS at 800x600 with everything set to low, but it can run it. ^_^