First new sys build in 2yrs+ so thought I better get advice

Will buy bits in new year but am researching now to get the best idea.

Budget looks like about £550-£600, thinking about

E6600
975X mobo (MSI acc to Tom's Review)
1 or 2GB DDR2 800 Mem prob Crucial (as always bought prev)
Radeon X1900 XT
SATA2 HD approx 250Gb

Have priced this on ebuyer.com with 1GB ram at £615, thinking about prices coming down after xmas should be able to manage.

Questions for now then:
1) Thoughts on best 975X mobo? Review picked MSI as editors choice but also said couldn't get mem to run at 800mhz

2)Above Gcard seems good VFM looking at VGA chart (only 10% less score than top for half the price). What you think?

3) Might consider two smaller HD and run a RAID0 but am always afraid of loosing everything if this goes south. How stable is a SATA RAID? and I suppose is the risk worth the performance gain?

Thanks in advance, have been doing lots of reading on here since registering and will start to try and chip in where I can with any knowledge I have.

D

Cheers for the link MP, makes for good reading, as you probably guessed hadn;t thought about PSU just blundered on thinking waould use the old one, lol.

Couple of new questions.

RAID5 - does that give me the ability to swap out a drive if one fails? I thought that was only poss with 5 disks.

I have a water cooling sys that currently fits my athlon xp 3200 on an Abit NF7-S board, any chance this would fit the conroe? It has a large flat surface, but I suppose it is the attachements that are the important bit. Will post more details soon and ??a pic.

cheers

I would recomend a cheaper graphics card because the DX10 cards are comming out real soon, just get something in the midrange untill then.
Did i miss something here since when did intel start allowing OCing on their motherboards, perhaps since the EE came out and they took the multiplier lock off? interesting news if so, intel always was a stickler about OCing, and never supported it in the past, someone update me on this one.

Whereabouts in the UK are you?, anywhere near Londium perhance?