First post on this forum for me.

Time to build a new system, the one i have is about 5 years old
It will be used for Office Progs and a little gaming (EVE-Online)

Bugget is not the problem, and i'm in Europe.

Like to build a fast system but also as silent as possible.
Power consumption is also importend (Electr. bills over time cost also alot)
No crossfire or SLI wanted

CPU
Intel Core 2 Quad, Q9450 boxed or maybe the Q9550

Motherboard
Asus R.O.G. Maximus Formula X38 or
Gigabyte GA-EX38-DS5 X38

Case
Antec Nine Hundred black

PSU
Corsair VX 550W ATX 2.2

Cooler
Noctua NH-U12P

RAM
2x 4096MB DDR2RAM Corsair Twin2x 6400U ???

GPU
EVGA 1024MB 8800GT Akimbo PCIe ???

HD
Seagate 7200.11 500 GB

DVD
Lite-On DH-52C2P Combo Black

Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit

About the prize, this would be aprox $1900 or €1260

Any advice about improving this build are welcome.

if you are concerned about power consumption, and still want high performance. look into nVidia's hybrid SLI. basicly if has low power onboard graphics, and then you add it a 9800gtx (only the newest GPUs work for it I guess) the IGP runs the web surfing and other normal stuff, and the discrete shuts itself down. when you fire up a game, the discrete fires back up and takes over. saves about 100 watts, pretty huge for a 24/7 computer.

I'm not sure how widespread the hardware has been launched, but I heard its availiable in europe.

you may also want to consider AMD/ATI, some of thier stuff is very low power.

if quiet is a huge concern, think about water cooling.

I don't know about the PSU and RAM you picked either way, but look for 80+ efficency in your PSU, and get one as small as possible. a 1000 watter pumping out 150 watts in idle isn't as effiecnient as a 400 watt PSU putting out he same 150 watts even if they are rated at the same efficiency.

I'd loow for low voltage memory. 1.8 volts would be great, 2.3 would not.

Get the 500GB/750GB Seagate 7200.11 hard drive instead.

1GB 8800GT isn't much better than the 512mb one, so stick with the 512mb, its cheaper.

Its a bit funny, but the 1GB 8800GT is cheaper as the 512MB

Will got for the Seagate 7200.11 HD

About the nVidia's hybrid SLI, sounds intresting, have readed about it. But i can't find here. (in the Netherlands or Germany online sellers)

last I heard, its suposed to release this month.