Multi-purpose System Build... Please advise

[dotNetTom]

1. What YOUR PC will be used for. That means what types of tasks you'll be performing.
Gaming/Programming/Video Editing/Photo Editing/Virtual Machines/General

2. What YOUR budget is. A price range is acceptable as long as it's not more than a 20% spread
$2000 - $2500

3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from.
US

4. IF YOU have a brand preference. That means, are you an Intel-Fanboy, AMD-Fanboy, ATI-Fanboy, nVidia-Fanboy, Seagate-Fanboy, WD-Fanboy, etc, etc, etc, you get the picture.
Flavor of the week. No preference really.

5. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are.
Not carrying over any parts.

6. IF YOU have searched and/or read similar threads.
Tons

7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds.
I plan to overclock, but nothing extreme.

8. WHEN do you plan to build it?
October

As stating above, I plan to use this for a lot. I've already decided to go Vista x64. The 8GB of RAM you'll see below is mainly to support my VM's while still having plenty of RAM for the host. When I game, I would like to set my games to max as well as run future games (Far Cry 2, Mirrors Edge, Left4Dead, Red Alert 3, etc), and support a 1680x1050 res for the 22inch monitor I'm purchasing below (unless convinced otherwise of course). The 4870x2, I believe, should help me reach that. I've also chosen the 4870x2 to help push the games on my 46" Samsung HDTV when my wife and son are not using it.

I do a LOT of multitasking when I'm not gaming. Photo/Video/Burning/Encoding/Virtual Machines/etc.

Below is my list. Criticism is appreciated.

Case
Antec P182

Motherboard
ASUS P5Q Pro P45 ATX

GPU
VisionTek Radeon HD 4870 X2 GDDR5

PSU
Corsair 650TX

CPU
Intel Q9550

RAM
G.Skill 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 1000 <---- (purchasing 2 sets for a total of 8GB)

HDD
WD Caviar Black 1TB

Optical
Samsung SH-S223Q/BEBN DVD Burner w/ Lightscribe

CPU Fan
Artic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro

Monitor
Samsung 2253BW

Any advise is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[Roguestar]

DDR2-800 should be good for a mild overclock, should you want to shave $30 off your bill. Nice case. Good choices for the rest of the stuff. You could drop down to the Q9450 and save some cash, if you're going to be slightly overclocking anyway.

 

[dotNetTom]

Thanks for the reply. I have considered dropping to a Q9450, but the price difference is marginal. I'm still considering it though, as like you said, I'm overclocking anyways. The items listed above, added with the few non-importants (speakers, keyboard, mouse, OS) come out to $2129.85. Not too shabby. If I dropped to DDR2-800 and the Q9450, I would probably hit ~$2050.

I was also looking at the WD Caviar 640's. Considered going with 2 of those, maybe in a RAID 0? What do you think? I've seen mixed feelings on which WD is actually faster. As I use Photoshop a lot (HDD intensive), performance is nice to have (although, I just couldn't justify a VRaptor's price). Also, I have a 2TB NAS I backup to, so RAID 0's failure risk is not a big issue.

 

[DSF]

If RAID 0's failure rate isn't an issue to you then it won't hurt anything to use it, but it's not really going to help much either. (Not in gaming anyway. I'm not 100% sure of its impact in photo editing/virtualization, but it's definitely less than most people expect.)

What's the resolution on your HDTV?

 

[dotNetTom]

The Samsung is full 1080P. 1920 x 1080. I've read the x2 shouldn't have any problems pushing max at that resolution.

 

[Roguestar]

RAID-0 has no place on a desktop computer system. The performance gains are minimal. Get yourself a single faster hard drive instead; the 640GB Caviar is nice but the 1TB Caviar Black might be right up your alley.

 

[sonnygdude]

The old memory and hard drive FAQ thread on here advised that you can get sporty performance by using one drive for your OS and a different drive for games/applications. That might be an option as well - reportedly good performance boost without the headaches of RAID 0.

As alwys, I seem to comment right behind Roguestar!