4850 is substantially cheaper than 4870 ($70-$100), and depending on your performance needs may be a better idea.  Never heard of the PSU brand, but with that said it doesn't look like a necessarily bad choice.  I'm not a fan of Foxconn, per se, but they haven't wronged me, either.  The hard drive is funny to me-but then again I'm a hardcore Seagate fan.

Suggestions: PSU ($45 saved).  It's difficult to make a motherboard recommendation without knowing whether you chose that one for its crossfire capabilities, but any equivalent I could suggest would at best save you $15-$20.

Also, as much as I hate to admit it, I've fallen behind on current motherboards, so I'm not the best guy to pick one.

The case is a bit too flashy for my tastes, but that's obviously a personal preference.  In any case, I can't help but recommend a Cooler Master Centurion series.  Anyway, you're probably not going to be able to shave more than $20-$25 off from that component alone.

The RAM looks fine-you could save $10 or $15 by using 800MHZ RAM and OCing it, but it's probably not worth the effort.

Just for the hell of it: OMG YOU GOT THE WRONG DVD DRIVE BURN IN HELL.

In other words...it doesn't particularly matter what burner you get, so long as you're happy with it, as they're all (mostly) the same.

I started looking around and pricing out an i7 system, but thanks to the DDR3 it'd be ridiculously costly-and the motherboards aren't helping much, either.  However, it's still worth noting that doing an upgrade to an LGA775 system is essentially a dead end at this point (somewhat like doing an upgrade to a 939 socket when AM2 launched, if you'll allow me to make that comparison).  But as I have no idea when the i7 platform prices will drop, I can't give you an idea of whether waiting would be a good idea.

If you change the motherboard+cpu combo to this AMD Quad Core 2.6 GHz which boosts you by 0.3 ghz per core and saves you $94 bucks!!! (theres a link under the combo deals to look at the motherboard and it does match the specs of everything else.) Other wise I thinks it is rock solid. Oh awsome you getting Acer is very good for high quality monitor prices.

What.

The man has specified a setup with an Intel board and CPU (and Intel is currently the performance leader), not to mention quad core even, and you're recommending him AMD because it's cheaper?

That might be a valid stance if he were looking at building a cheaper system, or possibly if he was considering going dual for gaming purposes rather than quad.  But it's still not a valid response.

For what it's worth, Penryns (Yorkfield) have been known to hit 4-4.5GHZ, even on the quads.  That's something an AMD CPU simply cannot do at this stage of the game-and Shanghai/Deneb won't change that, either.

True enough-at least they're not P4s.

My apologies; I assume everyone's going to OC.

(SSE4 on Penryn is nice though.  )

That is true, there both the same but I was reccomending something that was nearly the same except it wa 0.3ghz better. I have used amd cpu's alot and they last longer than any intel I have ever had and performed on the same level. I had a 9 year old compaq with amd in it and I only had to upgrade the ram and I could play Empire at War Forces of Corruption on it. The ironic part about that computer was the video port died before anything else on it. The computer i have now is an amd 2.44Ghz dual core with a nividea geforce 8600 gtx and 4gbs of ram and thats from exactly a year ago and it runs SoaSE rock solid on top graphics.

P4 = Pentium 4

Nine years ago, AMD was king.  (Well, pretty much.)

SoaSE isn't that demanding-sorry to burst your bubble.  Not to mention that most of that burden is going to be on your video card (and RAM, to a significant extent), so to be honest you could run a Sempron or Celeron and still see little or no problems.

There's no 8600gtx to my knowledge; you must be thinking of the 8600gts (or more unlikely the 8800gtx).

I don't think you understand that the gigahertz wars are over.  AMD's 2.6GHZ part is inferior to Intel's 2.33GHZ part.  Not by much, in the grand scheme of things (read: when comparing to Pentium 4s, et al), but it's still there, and it's worthwhile for some.  (It's also worth noting that this would be true even if we were to consider a 2.33GHZ Conroe [65nm] part compared to AMD's 2.6GHZ part-the gap with Penryn is actually larger.)

Well including shipping and rebates I went over $15, but I'm sure I can con my parents to pay another $35 for shipping. So the big suggestion seems to be a different PSU (just because it isn't a popular brand? It seems to have good reviews). I'll look into it. And Sole, I was originally going to get the 4850 but I talked to a few people over steam and one saw the rest of the PC's specs (eet actually) and said that a 4870 would be better, since a 4850 wouldn't bring out it's full potential. I don't really have the extra $300 for this 4870 though, I wish I did lol...

So for the PSU what should the (min) wattage be? And any game recomendations?

EDIT: To me that case would seem to have good airflow (1 x 80mm UV blue LED fan - top (included)
1 x 80mm UV blue LED fan - rear (included), and a side air duct) but I have no idea. 2 fans and an opening isn't enough?

I'm just not a big fan of side panel window cases.  Don't know why.  But I love my Centurion 534.

For what it's worth, though, I vastly prefer 120mm fans to 80mm fans (and in general, cases that have 80mm fans mounted don't have the mounting holes for 120mm fans, or so has been my experience).

4870 X2 != 4870.  4870 X2 = ~2 * 4870.

You still might want to consider it, especially if you're looking at going Crossfire.  Two 4850s in CF will outperform a single 4870, although offhand I'm not sure by how much, and this leaves you the option of picking up the second 4850 in a few months time when they're cheaper (as this would be less initial expense).

But you didn't specify that you indeed chose that board to go CF, so I don't know.

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It's not so much about it not being a popular brand, but about it being an entirely unknown brand.  Okay, maybe not entirely, but the point still stands.  Based on the specs alone, I'd say give them 6 months and they might have a brand following, but I'm just not comfortable recommending a product on the market from a company that I've never seen before.  I am however also somewhat wary of the fact that the label states 720W of the total 750W is available on the 12V rails.  You shouldn't ever see a 12V usage that high, but if you do, you might run into problems-the rest of the system isn't going to run on 30W alone.  (To see those kinds of numbers we're talking probably a 4GHZ+ C2Q with 2x GTX 280/2x 4870/1x 4870X2, at 100% load on all components no less, and even any of those will leave you some breathing room, but it won't be much.  Needless to say, if you're looking at doing any of those in the near to mid future, you'd want a heftier PSU than either the one you linked or the one I linked.)

You're going to want a 600-700W+ PSU with at least 35A total on the combined 12V rails, preferably 40A or more.  This comes to 420-480W+ of the PSU's power being available to the 12V rails-most power supplies have an image on Newegg that shows a breakdown of their power output, like this.  Note: Just because a PSU's specs says that it has, for instance, 2 12V rails at 17A, does not mean that it has a combined 12V rating of 34A.  (Additionally, most PSUs actually have one physical 12V rail and only separate them logically, but that's not something we need to go into today.  Basically, having one large 12V rail instead of multiple smaller equal ones is not a bad thing, and we'll leave it at that.)

If you're looking for a specific recommendation, rather than general rules, this is what you need to have a look at.

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Why do you think I recommended it?  I wouldn't suggest something that wouldn't power your system, and the CM even leaves you -some- room for expansion, though admittedly not as much as you might otherwise have.

With the Nehalem cores out, CPU prices will be very different in a month.

If you were going to be getting the 1GB Sapphire 4850 that you linked, then you're better off going with the 4870 you mentioned previously.  I only recommended the 4850 that I did because it would save you $90 and you were looking to decrease the price.

I wouldn't be the one to ask on 2x 4870s, but I did do some looking around.  There do not appear to be any single slot 4870s.  I'm seeing rumors that ASUS made one, but I can't seem to find it, and all the others appear to be dual slot.

It appears that the board you've selected (as well as other intelligently designed boards) would be able to accommodate two 4870s, but bear in mind that you will essentially lose one PCI slot (on that board) by doing so.  I would echo Adama's sentiment of favoring Gigabyte, but again, virtually any equivalent suggestion I can make will at best save you $15 or $20 and may in fact be more.

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If you'll look back at my previous post, you might recognize the fact that I recommended a beefier PSU if you intend to run significantly higher graphics in the future, which you appear to be considering with your mention of 2x 4870s.  If that is the case, I'll be glad to recommend one, but do note that the one that you've linked is most probably going to be insufficient for that purpose as well as the one I've linked-and you just can't find a PSU that "heavy" for much less than this, and to be honest this would be preferable, depending on how much upgrading you intend to do with this system and how long you intend to keep it.

I may have gone slightly overboard on those suggestions, so if someone who has more experience running the higher end graphics cards would care to comment, that'd be helpful-I'm only running an x1950GT, so I've never worried about my power consumption, at all.  However, it definitely leaves you room for further expansion in the future.

The CM is very good, but it's going to be running at or near its 12V limit with an OC'd C2Q and 2x4870s, at high load at least.  If you don't intend to OC or don't intend to play games that stress both your CPU and your GPU(s), then this is less of an issue, but it's still worthwhile to look forwards and consider what you might upgrade some components to.

The idea here is that you should only have to buy your PSU once.  There's no point in buying one now and 6-12 months down the line buying another one so that you can run another video card in tandem with whatever one you get now; just get the "right" PSU first.  There is of course the little problem of companies changing what power plugs are needed for their cards, but adapters are normally sold relatively shortly after these things happen and to be honest I think we've seen the end of this for at least a little while with the 8-pin connectors.  You may also notice that both of the ones I've linked in this post have 2x6-pin (for running 4870s) and 2x6+2-pin (additional optional for 4870 or for running future graphics cards on 8-pin).

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Hopefully and relatively likely (though not necessarily probable).  We'll see.  In any case, the Q8200 he's selected is only $190...how much lower do you imagine it will go?  This is a serious question, by the way-I'm curious what your estimate would be.

I'm doing the best I can to keep him under budget (though it's looking worse).  If things change by the time he buys, he can take that into account, or perhaps ask for milder suggestions.

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Let's do a short component comparison.

C2Q: $190.  LGA775 CF motherboard: $100-$130.  2x2GB DDR2-1066: $70 (that's a suggestion, Thrawn).  Subtotal: ~$350-$400.

i7 920: $320.  (This looks bad already.)  LGA1366 CF motherboard: $300+.  3x2GB DDR3-1600: $300+.  Subtotal: $920+.

Difference: $500-$600, give or take.  That's going to decimate his budget.  If DDR3 came down and the LGA1366 motherboards dropped below the $200 range, I could see it being worthwhile, and honestly I see where you're coming from, as moving off of the FSB is a Big Deal, but I still can't recommend it under the circumstances.

Good question-probably not, was just linking it as 1066 is more standard, and it's not a large price differential.  You could even go as low as 800MHZ and simply OC it, but I think I've already mentioned that.  Feel free to ignore that portion.  The real question is how high you want to take your RAM-if you want to go to 1333, then you'd probably want to do more research.

I was talking about the one you linked in your first post.

Certainly.  $15 more but a better board all around.  Has a higher rated memory capability, more USB ports, more SATA ports, a second LAN...it's all good stuff.  The Gigabyte specifies that one PCI-E slot will run at x8, but that's par for the course and I'd be surprised if the Foxconn board didn't do the same without saying so.

Yeah, that's your best bet.  The only question remaining in that department pertains to when you think you may get a second 4870 in the future and what PSU you'd want to have at that point in time-and get that one when you build the system, so you don't wind up buying two PSUs.

The two Zalmans I linked above are good bets for a 2x 4870 system with an overclocked C2Q and room to expand.  If you're not going to OC anything, the CM will work fine, but you won't really have room to expand/upgrade beyond the 2x 4870, like say when new cards come out etc.  Basically, the final form of this system would be about a 3.5GHZ C2Q and 2x 4870s, along with all your other normal stuff.

Without overclocking anything, you need 405W on the 12V rails (counting memory and motherboard in this estimate, so it may be slightly off, but it's close enough).  The CM I linked has a max of 540W on the 12V rails-sufficient if you're not going to OC, acceptable if you don't go above 3.5, but dangerously close to the line if you go to 4.0, at which point you have something like 5W of leeway.  Read: No room for expansion.  This is due to the fact that mild overclocking gains can be made by increasing clock speed, which increases power consumption, but larger increases to clock speed require voltage bumps to maintain stability, which although I don't remember the formula offhand, it's something to the effect of the normal effect squared, so it adds up extremely fast.

It's worth noting that all my numbers are assuming 100% system load, which is worst case scenario, but...it sucks to have a PSU blow on you, especially when it takes other components with it.  Better to not have to deal with that in the first place, and just be on the safe side.

I would definitely hold off for a while on the second 4870.  The first one should tide you over for at least a good 6 to 9 months, to be honest, at which point prices should have fallen sufficiently that you can pick up the second one for sub-$150, and perhaps even sub-$100 (although this is somewhat unlikely).

There's really no reason not to get 8GB of RAM right off the bat, unless one is buying DDR3 (which you're not), so go for it.  RAM is fairly cheap these days.