Budget $700 PC... Photograper - Artist.

My old P4 has had 2 hardware breakdowns in the last couple of weeks (CPU Fan, Stick of Ram went bad)... It was rather a wake up call when the local PC guy called my system old (I went to him to buy a new fan). So it's time to start working on building a new one.

I'm a photographer and a traditional artist so I need enough power edit my image files (600+ dpi scans of letter sized paper) in GIMP without a lot of lag. I had 768 MB of ram on my older computer and it doesn't lag much with the graphics files that I edit as long as I don't have anything other than an IM, and firewall, in the background. I'm light on gaming as the most power and graphics demanding games of choice are Mabinogi, and The Sims (the original, not 2.)

Also, I'll be running XP Professional.

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L
Gskill 2 x 1GB DDR2 800 PC2-6400
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250410AS 250GB ( I have an 80 and I use only about 2/3rds if that much of it.)
RAIDMAX Smilodon case. I like the looks and 500 watt PSU… If you know of something cheaper please suggest it.

Can anyone suggest a CPU fan, and cooler? To be honest I have no idea on how to pick out a good one. I know you look to match them to the socket.

Graphics… Something with an NVIDIA chipset… I’ve been looking around but a lot of cards seem overpowered for what I need… My current computer has a eVGA 5500GT and it works well for everything I do currently. Looking to the future as to buying games, the only ones I’m currently interested in is The Sims 2, and mayhaps the sims 3.

As for optical drives I have a CD burner that I can move over as well as a CD Rom (the sims won’t play on the CD burner) I’m also looking at DVD +/- RW for backups. Are DVD/CD RW Combo drives a good idea?

My apologies for leaving so many holes, this is the first time I’ve tried to put together a build completely solo. So I’m going at it a step at a time. Thanks in advance for the help.

My apologies for taking so long to reply. I've been looking around at the video cards... The MSI NX8600GT-T2D256E OC GeForce 8600GT seems to me to be the one to go with. I'm more worried about heat than noise.

The manual for this card recommends at least a 350 watt PSU... So 550 watt to be on the safe side for future expansions? This is the one I was looking at.

CORSAIR CMPSU-550VX 550W ATX12V V2.2 Power Supply - Retail

That leaves me at $670 (including sales tax & Shipping... I live in TN so newegg has to charge me sales tax)... Now I just need a case, and a DVD/CD RW drive.... I guess this is going to be a $800 PC ^-^;