You should ditch that IDE hard drive and get a Serial ATA II one. Besides the speed performance, Serial ATA cable is so much smaller, which makes it look cleaner inside your case. It also does not restrict airflow like a IDE ribbon does.

IDE speed 133 MB/sec
Serial ATA 150 MB/sec
Serial ATA II 300 MB/sec

don't go with the 640 mb version, there's about a 5% speed differance in the 320 and 640mb version. Unless of course you're running rediculously high resolutions, that extra ram isn't cost effective.

As far as power supply goes... I'd go with the BFG 600w power supply just because it has a lifetime warranty, and you can pick one up from best buy or any local store that honors manufacturer warranties (the benefit of this is if it ever breaks/stops working you can swap it out in store same day so you don't have to wait to play on computer).

the Q6600 is better than any of the extremes. Here's why; first most applications don't even take advantage of dual cores, let alone quads... so go with the cheaper quads, because once the games and such start taking advantage of them they're going to slowly ease themselves into it (it's not beneficial to design a game for the highest end gear that no one has) so it'll be a few years before the high end quads will even be cost effective... so the Q6600 (currently priced at like 330 and going to drop to 200 soon) is more cost effective and is more than you will ever need for the next two to three years.

You might want to consider getting a raptor hard drive as they run at 10,000 RPMS and are backed by western digital warranty... they're also about the fastest main stream hard drive you can get. Of course hard drives only really effect load times (which if you're playing a game that requires a lot of access to hard drive will be beneficial) it'll make installing things faster and general boot up faster.

Not really, the ram is only for running high amounts of data on the screen at one time... so like, a 320mb card can run oblivion at 1280x1024 res on highest settings just fine. While a 640mb version can do 1600x1200 just fine, and a 320 chugs in the outdoors a bit (well the 640 probably would too... heh... but just an example) and since most monitors 19 inch or so only support 1280x1024 as native resolutions or around there... sometimes lower... the 640 mb becomes a big hunk fo wasted money.

If you're going to spend the money for the 640, you might as well get the GTX version because you're moving into the 350-400 dollar range, and if you're puting out that much money you might as well go a tad bit further.

ya but it should recognize your monitors native resolution, and if you have an LCD below 21inches it'll be limited.

there is a native resolution - you can go higher, but it's not recommended. Check out any newegg monitor it'll show the "native resolution" of each monitor.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824001236

there. Shows a maximum resolution, which is the native resolution. CRT's can go higher than LCD's, but LCD's use less energy and room... while looking all the more sexier. Enjoy.