First build...Suggestions?

fix your links so we know what you are buying

Links are fixed, sorry about that. Was a little incoherent when I posted it this morning.

Most of those choices are fine with one exception.

The motherboard is not a good choice. The G965 chipset (with onboard video) is pointless since you have picked out a seperate video card. Get the Gigabyte 'DS3 motherboard instead.

Also, why not get the OEM OS for half the price?

I would get this RAM instead, mainly because I have used it and know it is good.

The Samsung 226BW is nice, but be careful ordering monitors from Newegg, their return policy for monitors stinks- you need a lot of dead pixels to return it if you get a bad one. My 226BW has zero problems (other than the fact that it's not a CRT   ), but you can always get a lemon.

Oh yeah, don't forget a hard drive and optical drives.

Hmm...I dont like the OEM versions because you cant install them on other machines, and odds are this wont be my first and only machine, but meh. We'll see about it. I already pretty much know what harddrive I'm getting, though if you know of a good couple drives for burning and playing music and movies, that would be a great help. There are so many brands and variations of each drive out there that it's hard to filter through the good and the bad.

One question about the RAM and the mobo you've suggested though and this is a question that time and again goes unanswered when I ask it. The timings on the RAM you've shown is 4-4-4 and the voltage 1.9-2.4 .....The mobo suggests RAM with timings of 5-5-5 or 6-6-6 with a 1.8V...Will it matter or affect performance if I go outside of that despite what the mobo specs say?

It works fine. That warning is left over from rev 1.0 of the board. I guarantee that RAM will work in that board because I've tried it and stress tested the system with it in. Plus you can run 4-4-4 RAM at 5-5-5 anyway. If you get the board I linked (not the cheaper rev 1.3 you can find on the Egg) they have resolved the RAM issues from the early P965 boards.

You can buy two OEM copies of Vista for the price of a retail copy, so I would think hard about if I would need to install it on more than two different computers over the lifetime of the program, and it looks like Vista may be short-lived as M$ is already hard at work on the next version. But you can buy the retail version if you want, I just wouldn't do it personally.

I'm using this SATA DVD-RW. It's worked fine for me but I don't have any experience with any of the other SATA DVD-RWs. I didn't want any IDE stuff in my PC for the silly ribbon cables or the cheesy round replacement cables.

Alright then. Finaly an answer to the RAM question and some good info on other stuff as well. Thanks much. I want to say I had another question...But...Cant remember it at the time being.

Remebered that last question.

Would it cause any difficulties to run a 5.1 setup on a 7.1 sound card?