What kind of processor are you planning on? The board choice will hinge on that.

I really like your choice of case. That one's really sharp, and doesn't have a damn door in the way like 90% of the BYOPC cases being made today.

Gonna be OK with only one optical drive? I like having dual for on-the-fly burning. But don't get two burners of the exact same model because it will be confusing. I recommend this configuration:
1 x DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive
1 x DVD-RW of the same brand (or similar looking bezel)

Be sure to peek at the Lightscribe drives. They usually only cost a couple bucks more, and come in very handy.

I'm not familiar with Sceptre, but those are high marks for that price. Nice contrast ratio and refresh rate.

You didn't mention hard drives, maybe because you intend to bring your old ones over. If they are IDE, I recommend converting to SATA-3 HDD's (at least for the main Win boot drive) so your sweet system isn't bottlenecked by disk performance.

If you want something to shove into that useless 3.5" floppy slot, this is a perfect card reader:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7903003&st=dynex+card+reader&type=product&id=1149206642856

And don't forget the Arctic Silver thermal compound. ;)

Do you have a MicroCenter nearby? I picked up a lot of perfect condition, heavily discounted components there as open box items.

ATI 100-437808 Radeon X1650PRO 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Video Card - $169.99

I didn't realize the video card I had selected was AGP. Oops...

As for a hard drive - Seagate Barracuda SATA 320GB - $79.99.

Still not sure about the CPU.

I <3 Microcenter! Too bad there isn't one near me anymore.

Fuzzy, I'd go with a Core 2 Duo mobo/processor combo, instead of an AMD X2. It might be a bit more, but the added performance is worth it.

I can also vouch for moving to SATA 3.0gbps drives. I just got a new 250gb one, and even though my motherboard only supports the original SATA standard, I still see a huge increase in disk throughput. The single drive is even faster than my Promise PATA RAID 0 Array.

As far as video cards go, get nVidia, please. Get one of the newer 8600 series cards. Extra video memory does not make up for a slow GPU.

I have a nice Samsung DVD burner that I picked up cheap, you can't go wrong there.


Also, lets be serious here, Crossfire/SLI video cards give a marginal performance boost for twice the price. I wouldn't even bother with it.

Here is what I'd suggest for a mobo.

Intel BLKDG965WHMKR LGA 775 Intel G965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard - OEM - $112.99

Then get this processor:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 Conroe 2.13GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E6420 - Retail - $186.00

Oh, and this video card ;)
BFG Tech GeForce 8600GTS BFGE86256GTSOCE OC HDCP Video Card - Retail - $219.99

Anyway, just my 2 cents.

Intel and nVidia - my two greatest foes. :)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820146565&CMP=OTC-d3alcatch3r