Quoted: Quoted: Are you going Intel or AMD? AMD XP 3200+ 2.2 ghz Barton core ASUS "A7N8X" nForce2 Ultra 400 (supports dual channel ram) EVGA Geforce 5600 256DDR Corsair 2x512 DDR400 (PC3200) Dual channel Right now with everything I want I'm coming in right under 1000 dollars (Listed above is not everything, I basically have everything I need for a gaming desktop), but I think I may take your advice and get two HDDs... so for the OS all I need is a small HDD and then a larger one for my data, or will that slow my OS down? Great thread guys

Looks like you've got a great setup planned.

As far as the Hard Drives, you have the right idea. It won't slow your puter down, it will actually speed it up, because you system will be writing to two seperate drives simultaneously rather than jumping around trying to write to 1 drive on different sectors at the same time. Also, make sure you 0 out your virtual memory on the system drive, and move it to the Data Drive.

Quoted: Buy the 36 gig WD Raptor SATA for your OS, $100 at ZipZoomFly, then buy a WD 200gig SATA, $120, for porn.

This is Great advice. The Raptor is a 10K rpm drive as opposed to the  7.2K IDE-type drives.

Quoted: ...and three 250 gig drives for storage.

More good advice, not sure if your motherboard will support it, but multiple Drives set to RAID 0 will be extremely fast (but there are risks)

Quoted: I'll never need a quarter of that for storage.

Think of Hard Drive space like AR-15 Magazines......

+1 for new egg. Im getting some stuff in today from them, Excellent prices and shipping.

I've made numerous purchases from newegg.com and have generally had a very positive experience. Just make sure that you get precisely what you want the first time and do your homework on compatibility, etc.. if you have to return something, even unopened, you'll find that you are hit up for a significant restocking fee... Unfortunately, I once accidentally ordered the wrong type of RAM and didn't notice until it arrived. oops. Don't let that happen to you.