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Don't need Fry's, though I do like mailordering from them.

I recommend Newegg and ZipZoomFly to anyone building their own systems. I built our systems from the cases in several years ago, and both those companies were very good to me.

Newegg has been my computer e-tailer of choice ever since, and not once have I been mistreated or short-changed. I have ordered on Sunday night and received my shipment on Tuesday. I have ordered merchandise that turned out to be defective, and gotten an RMA without much pain.

Although you didn't ask ...

I recommend Antec cases, just for the ruggedness factor --- they're all metal.

Be careful picking a motherboard. Make sure you get one with lots of USB and SATA ports.

He may want to take another look at the QuadCore ... new versions of current applications, especially calc-heavy apps like Mathematica, will be taking advantage of the Quad's power --- those CPUs won't lie fallow long. I've heard the QuadCore Q6600 price may fall below $200 again in the next month.

Four gigs of memory ... most of the motherboards want symmetry.

Look at a 750gB hard drive as well --- 750 is the new sweet spot. SATA, of course, and a good fast spinner with a nice large buffer.

Two DVD/RWs, to facilitate copying.

And, of course, the biggest, baddest graphics card your wallet can stand!

And get flat-panel monitors, if you don't already have them ... they are wonderfully restful to the eyes. And, if you have the room and the wallet, get two monitors for each computer ... you have no idea how much back-and-forthing you do until you can park one application on one screen and the second app on the other, and just move the mouse from one to the other.

<laughing!>Dang, Suzi, but you just helped me build our new systems!

Let me give you two more URLs: Anadtech and Tom's Guide. They're both cool sites all on their own, but they both have guides for building new systems, and, more importantly, they have "Hot Deals" sections (Anadtech's Hot Deals, Tom's Hot Deals) where people post sales and rebates on computer hardware.

When I built our systems, I bought our Memorex CDRWs from Office Depot on closeout, with a rebate that made my net price less than $1 apiece. (Woot!) And our hard drives wound up costing around $40, which, back then, was pretty much a steal. I also got the cases for a song --- the e-tailer had moved, and in the process had lost a lot of orders. To try and improve their rep, they had a huge sale and offered free shipping for orders over $50. I reaped the benefits.

And, oh yeah ... you want to run XP, not Vista. Friends don't let friends install Vista.

More than you ever wanted to know about system buildouts!

SirKit is looking seriesly at the Core 2 Duo E8400 processor, and we're looking at a couple of ASUS motherboards, the P5Q Deluxe, and the P5Q3 Deluxe/WiFi. Any thoughts, or other suggestions? As I said, this computer will be basically mine, and since I just bought the new Chief Architect CAD program, we wanted something that would have enough oomph to handle the files, graphics, rendering, etc easily. He also wants something on which he can run his Mathematica program without it grinding on.

He already has a case into which he can put these components; in fact, it is an Antec! But we are thinking of going ahead and moving into Vista, but getting the Ultimate, not the Home Premium. They're all shipped with the Service Packs now. That's something we'll think more about, and if he's building it himself, he can start off with the XP and see if we need to move up.

He's looking to put the box in the Foyer closet, and run my keyboard and mouse with Bluetooth, giving me an external CD and DVD player so I can run those without having to go to the box to do that. He wants to keep the noise down, at my desk, which is in the den with the TV, and he'd also like to set it up so that we could use the TV as another monitor, if we want to do so. Also, not having that big box taking up space will be nice. He can install an opening in the closet to the unheated part of the basement to take the warm air out, and bring cooler air up to keep the closet from getting too warm, though it's likely to not be a big problem, anyway.

Oh, and we'll be looking to upgrade my monitor. I got a 17" flat panel a year ago, but having a 19" or even 22" would make it a LOT easier for me to see the CAD drawings, especially the little dimension numbers. ;o)

I'll pass this 17" one down to Joseph, so he can take it to school in August. Right now, he's still using one of the old clunker monitors in his room, but we didn't want to have to haul that sucker down to put in his dorm room. His may be the last big one that we have. We've gotten rid of them, over the years, and replaced them with the flat screens. SirKit even found a flat screen monitor that he's going to put on a swing arm under one of the new cabinets in the kitchen! We'll have this house all geeked out when we put it on the market!