I shall soon rebuild my system as she approaches my traditional two year rebuild date. I would do it now but so much technology coming out Q3 of this year so I'm going to hold out for it. Until then, using this thread to spec out teh system...

Case: CoolerMaster ATC-110 (Preowned)
Power Supply: PC Power and Cooling TurboCool 510 (Preowned)
Motherboard: Asus P5K3 Deluxe (Not Released)
Processor: Intel Core 2 Penryn Quad 3.33Ghz (Not Released)
Memory: Corsair Dominator 2x1GB DDR3 1333MHz (Not Released)
Video: ???Hopefully something new will roll out this fall???
Sound Card: ?
Hard Drive: ???Whatever perpendicular drive is the best priced???
Optical: Plextor DVD-RW/DL SATA (Preowned)
Floptical: 1337 1.44MB w/ Lightscribe (Preowned)
Heatsink: Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme (Not Released)

Should be a standard issue situation where teh girl gets my old system and her's becomes someone elses prize.

noes! get teh lolleriffic 2 socket AMD board so yuo can get teh 8 cores!!1one

wolfdale looks good... 2.33Ghz dually with 6MB shared L2, 1333Mhz FSB

I chose the motherboard based on options i need (SATA RAID, PCIe 16x slot, support for 45nm/quad core) And a secondary option in this is it's ability to overclock.
I lucked out on this board cause it supports C2Q and wolfdales, up to 8GB of RAM, HD audio, Gigabit LAN, and 6 Port SATA II RAID 0,1, 0/1, 5 AND it's good above 500Mhz FSB (2000 Mhz quad pumped) (This allows for running 1600Mhz FSB CPUs.

CPU is also chosen for overclocking and price. In this case the e4500 was the highest end Allendale w/ 2MB shared cache , 800Mhz FSB, and 65W TDP.

Other parts, like case, PSU, RAM are high quality parts. I generally read the customer reviews for these on Newegg and specialty site reviews.

Basically my strategy is futureproofing then overclocking. I tend to shy away from platforms where a socket change is immenent (AMD IMO IRL)

but my question is what do you overclock for? You are not play massive games anymore right? At least if you do, you don't use xfire for it. I've been playing all old school games so it would really be a waste of money for me to upgrade but I still want to~ won't happen tho

I overclock more for fun now than anything else. It does help in higher end games like COD4/Crysis/GoW especially when a good GPU/CPU clock are combined but also better responsivness in a multitasking/regular usage setting can be had when you up the FSB because this increases not only CPU speed but RAM and other subsystem's speed. It's a noticable difference going from 2.2Ghz to 3.2Ghz even sitting at the desktop. Most processors today (even the cheapo dual core celeron) can do great overclocks with little headaches right out of the box. My 2 friends computers I built for them are running the 1.86 C2D's w/ 4MB cache (I think they're discontinued now) @ 2.5 and 3.0 Ghz with stock heatsinks.

I also do F@H and a high, stable OC shaves off several hours off of a WU

So one year after I cried to rebuild, it shall be done...and not a single thing I picked out other than my case I already have will be used. I'm even considering overclocking since I got a kickin' X48 motherboard and can get a $300 processor to outpace the $1400 extreme line...but I don't think I'm ready to violate my own code of ethics.