ok, this is what i've pretty much decided on...
let me know if you have any suggestions or think ishould change anything...

-THERMALTAKE TSUNAMI VA3400 ALUMINUM CASE 4X5.25 2X3.5 5X3.5INT 400W SILVER MIRRORED

-AMD ATHLON 64 3000+ PROCESSOR S939 VENICE 1.8GHZ 512K L2 CACHE 90NM RETAIL BOX

-DFI LANPARTY UT NF4 ULTRA-D MOTHERBOARD ATX S939 NFORCE4 ULTRA DDR 2PCI-E16 PCI-E4 PCI-E1 2PCI

-CORSAIR VALUE SELECT DUAL CHANNEL 1024MB KIT PC3200 DDR CAS2.5 2X512MB

-MAXTOR DIAMONDMAX 10 200GB 7200RPM 16MB 9MS SATA OEM HARD DRIVE

-ATI RADEON X800 XL PCI-E 256MB 256BIT GDDR3 DVI TV-OUT OEM VIDEO CARD

-1.44MB BLACK 3.5IN FLOPPY DRIVE

-BENQ DW1620 PRO DVD+-RW 16X4X16 DUAL-LAYER+R 4X BLACK IDE OEM W/ SW

-LOGITECH LX 700 CORDLESS DESKTOP KEYBOARD & OPTICAL RECHARGABLE MOUSE USB PS/2

Recommend an LG DVDRW over the benq. We have seen lots of issues with the benq DVDRW's and 64 bit CPU's.

Also Recommend ANY harddrive over a Maxtor. Lots of them dying lately. Grab a pair of Samsung 120GB SATA's instead. That way youv'e got 2 drives as well.

I havea AMD 64 3000 with 512megs, Radeon 9550 . my brother got me a smoking deal where he has a computer company that he builds in Victoria, really good prices. give me a PM and i will forward you his number to call for a quote.

mike.

I will beg to differ with this, I have a friend that owns a graphic design studio and last year he dumped the Mac and went AMD across the board (23 computers). there reason is because the Mac software development has slowed and the amd/ibm computer hardware has caught up so there is no more difference, except for the fact Mac is trying to push small and cute now instead of power.

Steve

i also agree that mac's don’t cut the mustard for graphics work anymore. i use a p4 simply for cheap raw processing power. my boss even has a sweet dual g5 with a few gigs of ram that he basically turned into a mp3 server because its slow and OSX is cumbersome to use. if i was buying a new workstation today it would definably be AMD 64 bit.

ended up getting
3200+ 'venice' 2.0G
asus a8n-e
1G kingston hyperX dual channel ram (2 x512)
1G Corsair valueselect dual channel ram (2 x 512)

anyone have tips for overclocking? i have no clue, i've just bumped it up to 2.4G for now [240 *10]

oh yeah battlefield2 is wicked!