Questions about first time build, $1000, upgradeable

[walshbd]

I've decided my laptop isn't cutting it any more and I'm looking at building a computer to do a little a bit of everything, gaming, CAD, graphics editing, media ... I'm looking at spending around $1000 now and making upgrades with another $500 or so over the next year. I'm new to this and would appreciate any advice/tips for a first timer. So far I've picked out:

Q6600
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L
Crucial Ballistix 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800
XFX 9600 GT
Western Digital WD 5000AAKS
Antec 650W PSU
Antec 900
Random DVD-RW
OS ???

With future upgrades including:
a second XFX 9600 GT
a second WD 5000AAKS (RAID 0)
ASUS silent square CPU cooler


Any glaring problems with this setup?

I'm also looking at using Vista for the OS. How much will it hurt me to use Vista over XP? Is it worth it? I prefer the Vista interface, but I know it can be a resource hog. Should this 650W PSU be sufficient for when I upgrade?

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[dagger]

Looks good, fairly balanced. Note that p35 board does not support sli. As for Vista, get it. Your build is enough so that the heavy OS won't affect performance much. Quad core and 4gb of ram should be more than enough. Make sure it's the 64bit version.