Sorry I have not got back to you sooner. I will look over your stuff and give my 2 cents laer today. Gary "N2DEEP" Owner/ Admin www.OnTargetLan.com OnTargetLan - "Lans that hit the MARK!"
First question is what is your budget? Also, when so exactly when do you want to build? Will this be a gaming computer only? I know you said first week of Feb. but if you could wait a few weeks pricing will be coming down on graphics cards due to next gen. being released and out long enough for older gen. pricing to fall.
With that being said, if money is no object I would go for the next gen. Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem. I would choose the i7 because it is newer technology and there is a better chance of being able to upgrade the system without having to start over down the line. I hear that this chip overclocks well but will run hot so get a good heatsink. Gaming performance would be about the same between the i7 and C2D even with the higher clock of the Q9950.
I have my reservations about dual graphics cards as well. I would prefer to have a fast, single GPU as opposed to multiple card setup. The additional heat of two cards, higher power requirements and potential driver/software issues make me hesitate to run dual graphics cards.
Considering the resolution that you are running at I think that a nVidia 285 GTX would be fine. I would also advise against the dual chip cards as well, the ATI x2's and nVidia 295's, etc. because there still driver issues with this newer technology. Finally, I prefer nVidia's drivers over ATI's. There seems to be more updates to nVidia Drivers than to ATI's and from what I understand there is a conflict with in game Xfire with some of ATI's cards.
Keyboard, mouse, headset etc. are personal preferences. I actually like Razer's line of mice. I use a Habu for gaming. I have tried Razer's keyboards and I don't like them at all. I use a Logitech slim style laptop type keyboard. Seems more responsive for gaming and I can type faster on it as well. I also like Func mousepads. I use a F30R at the moment. Again, it's all personal preference in this area.
I would buy a good set of headphones and attach a seperate mic. instead of buying a Razer headset. I use a Audio-Technica ATH-A900 with a Zalman ZM-MIC1 attached. These are a closed headphones with a music oriented sound stage without an amp needed.
This is just my opinion but feel free to ask me a question about what I have posted.
