[otctrader]

Brian -

I echo the other comments on here; most important, I agree the Xeon dual processor setup is a waste of money unless you intend to run some commercial server. For high-end gaming and general home use just get yourself the fastest Intel out there (3.6, 3.8 or whatever it is). The Xeon will probably cause performance degradation with games and many applications since cutting-edge software coded in low level languages isn't going to be optimized for the Xeon chipset.

Can't help on the graphics card, but if you want to play fancy games don't skimp on it - I would get the top of the line Geforce/Nvidia model. You'll pay for it, but these things become obsolete pretty fast so if you buy the top model you'll at least get a few years out of it.

Memory is important IMO; spend the money on the 2 gigs - check prices through your manufacturer and a 3rd party; if you go the 3rd party route make certain your motherboard can handle the upgrade.

Don't know much about the RAID hd, I've heard pros and cons. Don't have one in my rig and I'm glad since when my motherboard fried I was able to just pop my hd into my old Dell and I had access to my data in a few minutes - this would have been impossible if it was a RAID setup.

Good luck