First, I'll start by telling you what I'm holding on to:

• Monitors: I have a Samsung SyncMaster 204BW and Hyundai Imagequest L70N in dual-monitor mode, essential for the graphics design and programming that I do. Having a dual-monitor setup makes window organization easier and makes me more efficient (sometimes).
• Hard Drives: I had to make sure my new motherboard could support enough IDE channels to allow me to keep my optical and hard drives. With around 1TB of storage already, split between two PATA and two SATA drives, I can't afford to lose any data.
• Printer: I have a clunky old Lexmark x5150 all-in-one. Lexmark still hasn't released drivers for Windows Vista™, and I've never been able to print from Linux, either. However, when it does work, it works fine, so I guess it stays.
• Webcam: I use my Logitech QuickCam Communicate STX that Microsoft gave out to MSN Messenger 7.0 testers a lot for its built-in microphone convenience, but as I've recently realized, it's quite a decent video camera as well. I may not be recording in HD, but ironically, it does better than even Microsoft's own LifeCam series.
• Keyboard and Mouse: Speaking of Microsoft hardware, I've been really satisfied with my Wireless Optical Desktop Pro keyboard and mouse set, even though it did take me a long time to adjust to the ergonomic keyboard. These peripherals are some of the best I've used, and were designed simply enough so that the keyboard and mouse are easy to take apart and clean, if necessary. However, the best part is the battery life: it takes forever before I have to recharge my batteries.
• Sound Card: Not sure about this yet, but my new Audigy SE will probably be going in the new box.
• Speakers: And to listen to it, I will be holding onto my Creative SBS380 2.1 speaker set. It's a good entry-level set of speakers with subs, and since I don't typically use my speakers, I don't need anything high-end.

Now, on to the good stuff. This is the order that I've placed that should be coming in soon:

• Case: I'll need a full-tower case if I want to house all my hard drives and the two optical drives that are going into the machine, so my mid-tower won't cut it. My choice was the NZXT Zero full-tower ATX case for rating, airflow, and overall design.
• Power Supply: To power the machine, I'm going to need something hefty that's not going to fail on me, like the last one did. Therefore, I opted for an OCZ GameXStream 700W power supply. It should be ample to handle all the power-hungry parts in my new computer.
• CPU: I do a lot of virtualization and a lot of processor-intensive tasks as part of various jobs and hobbies, so I needed something world-class. Since I'm an Intel shareholder and since the Core 2 Duo™ is the best processor available on the market, I went for a Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz dual-core central processing unit. With that, I may also upgrade to 64-bit Windows as well.
• Motherboard: To handle the new CPU's power, to handle all my optical and hard drives, and to handle the new video card and memory that are going into the box, I chose the MSI P6N motherboard, coming highly recommended and better than any piece of crap ECS board that someone tries to pawn off on me.
• Memory: Speaking of memory, I do use VMWare, Photoshop, and other memory-hogging applications, and I need memory that matches my processor, motherboard, and choice in applications, so I went for 4GB worth of OCZ Platinum Revision 2 DDR2 800 SDRAM. It should be more than enough to last me a while.
• Video Card: This was an interesting decision. I went with an eVGA Superclocked 8800 GTS w/640MB GDDR3 for several reasons:
  1. It's comparatively cheap. I figured that such a high-end video card would be a lot more expensive, but apparently not.
  2. I have two monitors that tie into my primary computer, pumping a max resolution of close to 3000x1000, and I needed something that could handle that with ease and not choke under pressure, as my 6600GT AGP did, even when I could overclock it.
  3. I never wanted to deal with video cards again, so this should be futureproof for quite a while.
  4. It's an awesome video card that would be great to have considering the applications I run.
• Hard Drives: Aside from the four hard drives that I already own that are going into the box, I'll also be adding two new Western Digital Caviar WD5000YS 500GB SATA 3.0Gbps/s hard drives that will be configured in RAID 0. As of right now, I have no backup system for my documents, so if lost, I may not be able to recover them. To prevent such a catastrophe, these best-in-class hard drives will be charged with the task of redundant mirroring and storage of my documents.
• TV Tuner: I've enjoyed being able to watch TV on my computer with very little hassle on my WinTV-PVR-USB2 tuner, but that's going to my dedicated PVR box. In its place will go a WinTV-PVR-500 from Hauppauge. I didn't need HD (don't have an HD signal), so this should suffice. I also bought a Remote for it.

I will add more information later, but for the time being, I'm psyched about the new box. However, all of this couldn't happen at a worse time: it's finals week, and I shouldn't be worrying about any of this stuff.