New System Setup - Need Opinions

Not sure what you're trying to achieve. If you really want the Asus Crosshair and you expect Barcelona to NOT work on it, then why wait for Barcelona? Get yourself a 6000+. Come on, do your part to save AMD and buy their stuff. If all AMD fans stop buying AMD products and wait for Barcelona then AMD will go bankrupt and there won't be a Barcelona, ever....

The Toughpower 850 is a great PSU and it will handle your setup all right. It's also big, check that it fits into that case.

Maxtor is not my favourite. I'd go with WD or Seagate.

Two DVD-RWs is overkill, one would do.

Ultra is overpriced, get a GTX, maybe overclock it or get one with a serious factory overclock like the ACS3 or OC2.

I suspect the crosshair will be able to handle the Barcelona because I read that F-socket and AM2 are fairly similar.

The toughpower seemed to have good reviews and I regularly leave my current PC running for extremely extended periods  

I wasn't particularly bothered about the Harddrives, if they are all running with about 16mb cache and at around 7200RPM (not taking into account the raptor) then does it have a significant effect??

The 2 DVD-RW's was just a personal preferance I thought it may be handy to have at least 2 DVD drives for direct burning.

In referance to the CPU, i've never had an AMD and it will certainly be the first in my house, so brand loyalty isn't neccesarily 'important' but I see what you mean. It also comes down to pre-planning, I'm going to hongkong towards the end of the year and no doubt ill be able to get cheaper components, so the wait for barcelona is also caused by the fact that I want cheaper parts because im still in high school and I want this to last me a fair time, prefferably through college. (future proofing)
Can you offer any idea's on soon to come mother boards that are worth the wait?

And thanks for the note on the case, eek, didnt even check that.

Heaps of thanks for the quick reply!  

"Fairly similar", as in one has 837 pins and the other 838? Just kidding, I have no idea. The thing is, they're either compatible or they aren't. I'm having difficulty imagining a CPU that is "fairly compatible" with the mobo  

The hard drives - it's just that Maxtor has had some quality issues, it's probably best avoided.

OK, let's see. For future proofing, the best processor these days is Q6600, I think. I just got myself one, in fact. You could combine it with a GA-P35-DS3R. An X38-based motherboard may be even better from this point of view, we'll know next month when they come out. By the end of the year there will also be a new $999 CPU from Intel and a new (probably $999) video card from nVidia. Nobody knows if AMD/ATI will release something new in the CPU/GPU areas until then, but it would be very good for AMD if they did. nVidia will also have a new chipset to compete with X38.

Tell you what, by the time you go to Hong Kong a lot will be changed, it's kind of silly for me to try and make recommendations now if you're buying in December. Ask again in November, OK?

I have a corsair 620W with a raptor X and GTX. I never shut it down, except if I go out of town or restart for updates and its been running like a champ. 850W is a lot of power  . It's your choice though   good luck on your build!

Its a rumor , (not true for 100% ) that AM2+ is backward compatbile with AM2 socket ( REMEMBER AMD HASN'T CONFIRMED IT AND ALSO ITS AND OLD RUMOR ) (I have wrtoe this sentence about 1000 times in AMD FORUMS lol !   )

aevm: Fair enough, regarding the case, is it worth waiting out on that one too, as in, are there any rumours or facts that motherboards may be getting a size increase to cope with the new DirectX10 Gphx Cards?

And thanks for slowing me down a bit haha, you know how sometimes you just hype yourself up so much that you really can't be bothered waiting...and then u read about how 'such and such' is coming out and its a big blow even though you knew it all along. haha.

Solariscs: I think, because I'm trying my best to future proof it, the +100 or so bux that I'll pay for the 850W will be worth it in the long run and its one part I'll be able to hold on.
Because there have been so many huge changes since I bought my last comp I have to rebuy EVERYTHING because none of the old parts will fit (DDR, IDE, Crappy PSU and the list goes on) I just don't want to find myself in that situation again  
However, I'll definitely look into the corsair's, i somewhat created an illusion in my head that Corsair is for RAM and Thermaltake is for cooling, cases and power   (stupid brand names!)

Maziar: Thanks for clearing that up for me, The net is a misleading place unfortunately.

And I'll definately look into another choice for my hard drive, at least thats ONE thing that I can buy without risking a huge waste of money, because they can't possibly be just about to release an entirely new HD.

I'll definitely be back here asking question around November   Til' then I'll go help other people and learn from their mistakes   Nothing better than over 1000 test dummies at your disposal in one handy little forum lol!

I haven't heard anything of the sort. I expect the 9800 GTX cards to be 11" long just like the 8800 GTX, so they can fit in the same cases as the 8800 GTX. If they are longer then we'd have a lot of annoyed people again, like we had with the 8800 GTX. Some people may be willing to upgrade the card but not if they also have to buy a new case, and nVidia knows that.

Motherboards shouldn't change sizes, I think. The PCI-E 2 slots will be physically the same size as PCI-E 1 slots, so you can have backward compatibility. Maybe they'll allow more room between slots, for thicker cards?? We'll know when the X38 is out next month.

Let me try a guess here: if a 8800 GTX has 700 million transistors and it's done at 90 nm, and the 9800 GTX has 1.4 billion transistors at 65 nm (both just guessing, OK?) then the 9800 GTX will take about 2*(65/90)^2 the size of the 8800 GTX, i.e. about the same size. The cooler on it may have to be more powerful, but that doesn't necessarily mean thicker. I think there's a good chance that the new card will be the same size as the 8800 card. I am sure nVidia is trying to achieve this because it would improve sales.