When it all boils down, buying cheap (what you're doing) is a waste of time when buying a PC. You're going to be out-of-date before long, and will probably run into more issues and ergo, more headaches. This is generally why I'm going Mac - less time !@#$%^&*ing around, better performance, more time doing what I actually want to do on a computer. But anyway, to reply properly... I'd personally save up a little longer, and purchase a Tyan motherboard, and go for Xeon processors. I was using this kinda setup on multiple computers, and they ran perfectly. Oddly enough, though - on my most recent computer, I had Quad-Xeons, but I felt that it never performed half as well. Diagnostics tests have shown that actually having more power over multiple cores doesn't always have beneficial results to performance - but I'll let you read up about that yourself and come to your own conclusion. Also, don't blow Vista completely out of the water. With some (clever) configuration, you can get some good results from it. It just depends on whether you're willing to spend the time configuring it. If you're going very high spec, and especially if you're going for more RAM, I'd even say it would be wise to use Vista as it keeps the RAM in an active state. But if you hate Vista that much, or are just conservative to change then by all means stick to XP. Also, don't overclock any Xeon processors. They're usually already brought near to their boil point. As for everything else - well, that's all pretty easy to choose. My personal preference for a graphics card is the 8800GTX, and PSU etc depends on the specs you've arranged. ---- Anybody know of the pros/cons to 64-Bit - I've been reading up a lot on it, but don't want to state any opinions /just/ yet. -Lynx