I just bought a new rig myself. I based my purchase solely on Taxman's recommendations: He handed me a list, and said, "If it were me, I'd by THIS", and it's a sweet set up.

Ideazon Gaming Keyboard

Win XP Pro, includes discount for Vista, when released.
Cooler Master Mid Tower

GigaByte Motherboard

GForce 7600GT Graphics card. This card is a placeholder until a Vista capable card with DirectX 10 support is released.

Cooler Master 550 W power supply

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi ExtremeMusic sound card.

Logitech G5 6 Button Laser Mouse


Plextor 16x DVD Burner


CoolerMaster CPU Cooler

2 GByte Corsair DDR2 SDRAM system memory

250 GByte Western Digital 3 GB/sec 7200 RMP SATA hard drive

Intel Dual Core Duo 2.8 GHz CPU


This system, along with a VX2235wm 22" ViewSonic flatscreen LCD monitor I got from buy.com ran me just a bit under $2000, which is a bit above the price you listed, but it is a solid configuration with room for growth. If I wanted to go nuts, I could drop another 2 GBytes or so of RAM in, and go with a Quad Core processor, but for now, I think this is sufficient

To the everlasting glory of the infantry...

Owain ab Arawn
KGB Supreme Knight
King's High Council