Woot! I Finally built it!
I finished my build a couple of days ago. Thanks to anyone here for any help/advice given.
I ended up going with:
case: NZXT Lexa
cpu: Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Toledo
motherboard: Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe
ram: 2gb Corsair XMS pc3200 (2-3-3-6) (w/ activity led's)
videocard: Evga GeForce 7900gt CO (500/1500) (x2 eventually)
soundcard: SoundBlaster X-Fi Platinum
hdd 1: Western Digital Raptor 150gb (10,000rpm, 16mb cache)
hdd 2: Seagate 300gb Barracuda (7,200rpm, 16mb cache)
psu: OCZ Powerstream 600w
monitor: Samsung 930BF 4ms 19" LCD
speakers: Creative Inspire p7800 7.1 surround
optical drive 1: Sony dru710 DL dvd burner
optical drive 2: HP dvd640 DL dvd burner w/ lightscribe
floppy drive: Koutech 3.5 Drive w/ multi card reader
mouse/keyboard: Logitech LX 700 wireless desktop
misc: Belkin SurgeMaster under monitor power center
misc: Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste (on cpu and gpu)
misc: Round IDE cables for optical and floppy drives
misc: 5.25" external storage bin
This rig just screams! I love it! BF2 at max settings runs at 80-100 FPS, and Oblivion runs very smooth at max settings (dunno FPS command). Windows loads in ~10 seconds, shuts down in ~5 seconds. Finally I can stop envying everyone else's specs and enjoy my own high end machine!
The only issue I had was my X-Fi soundcard doesn't seem to like my setup. It has constant static (idle or in use) in all modes. I tried switching pci slots as well as re-installing drivers. I've since found out that this seems to be a fairly common problem with the X-Fi series cards and nForce chipsets. I'm annoyed to say the least.
I threw in an old 5.1 Audigy card for the time being. I think I'll get an Audigy2 ZS or an Audigy4 as soon as I RMA the X-Fi card.
Anyways, thanks again.