I told you exactly where I got my prices: the lowest price on the first page of a Google search for the specific component. No lies or misrepresentations.
I don't know which one you were looking at, but the Asus I saw there for $273 is inferior to the Mac, with only PCI Express 8x and fewer memory slots. Asus has one closer to the Mac's specs, but it's over $400 from Froogle.
960 Watt Power Supply (this is 1KW) $ 291.01
As with what I priced, that is really pushing it. One place you can't get cheap on, especially for a power-hungry system such as this, is the power supply. You'll be lucky if a cheap 1KW power supply can deliver even close to that on a continuous basis. You risk blowing your whole system.
Firewire 2 (USB included on ASUS MB) $ 47.69 - Why would you need this? USB 2 is more than enough.
Because as it is, Firewire 400 is already faster than USB2 (up to 70% faster due to the architecture). People doing graphics or video work would need even better, Firewire 800. It takes an inordinate amount of time to transfer multi-gigabyte files to my 500 GB USB2 external drive. My next one will be Firewire 400 or 800, and I'll barely notice the difference between an internal or external drive.
Optical Mouse (scroll wheel... scroll ball is only available on Macs but it can be made to work on Windows) $ 11.25
The only scroll button mouse I've seen even close to that price was nowhere near as good as the Apple mouse. They always make the scroll ball too big and not resistant enough against your finger.
but I’m sure Home Premium is more than enough to compete ($110)
Apple doesn't sell an injured version of an operating system that is already superior to any version of Vista. You need Ultimate to even try to compete.
Anyone who pays more than $70 or so for a basic case deserves what they get.
Anyone who only pays $70 deserves what he gets -- a poorly-ventilated, difficult to service case.
Filo, I think you need to do a little more research.
The NVIDIA Graphic card you found for the lowball price on Froogle seems to be a non-DVI. The one in the Mac is a dual DVI Output. In addition, all of the low end cards I found under $49.95 on Froogle were unclosed eBay auction items. Not exactly a reliable source for pricing. The $44.95 cards I saw offered got to that price with a $20 "mail in rebate" which may or may not be viable. I'd probably take the chance.
The only 1000W power supply on Froogle that I found for under $130 was a "pull" that had a 30 day non-DOA warranty. Again, not representative of the market. The next least expensive at $175 was also a "pull"... The legit new 1KW p/s started at $219.95 and went up from there.
The $27 DVD burner "white box" is a return. Again not equivalent. I did see some non-return new for $34.
As for Vista home premium being adequate, this is a "Workstation" class machine and needs the full enchilada not one lacking the security and networking capability that the home version offers. I can accept your $173 price except that the only ones I found in that price range seemed to be coming from overseas sources which may mean they are not legit. I chose the $196 OEM because the supplier was listed as an MS development partner. I certainly do not accept the "Home Premium Edition" as OSX LEOPARD is easily the equivalent of Vista Ultimate.
I did find some lower priced MBs and the processors seem to be even lower than your $565, I found some at $519... but the suppliers all said to call for availability which tends to make me think they'll boost the price when you call. There has to be something wrong when a couple of unknown name suppliers are offer premium processors at $200 - $250 below the market. I also found a "call for availability" ASUS 771 dual socket MB for only $219... The next step up was your $259 one. The rest were over $300. Again you have to ask why the very large discount?
I have built numerous PCs from parts and have never been able to find name brand processors and MBs at $100 discounts. When I've responded to such ads they were invariably "out of stock" but have another model at a higher price that they can sell me.