So im planning to build a new gaming rig pretty soon. I have a family member working with ATI which gets me 50 % of their cards (yay!). My budget is 2000$. So far, these are the parts I've been looking at.

Antec 900 Case - 109.95

Corsair 750W PSU w/ 140mm fan - 114.95

Intel C2Q Q9450 2.66Ghz - 364.95
or
Intel C2Q Q9550 2.83Ghz - 579.85

Intel Desktop Board DX48BT2 w/ DualDDR3 1600, 7.1 Audio, Gigabit Lan, 1394, Dual PCI-E x16 CrossFire - 309.95

Patriot - DDR2 4gb (2 x 2gb) - 109.95

SEAGATE- 500gb hard drive - 84.95

Samsung 20X speed plus DVD write - 27.95

2 HD4870 512 mb cards

Vista 64 bit.


Hows this looking so far? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Case- good
PSU- Excellent
Q9450- 9550 not worth the $200- overclock.
No No no! Intel boards are rock solid yes- but offer zero overclocking and tweaking options. DDR3 is a complete waste. Look at t he Asus P5Q Pro with the RAM you picked. The board and RAM you have right now WILL NOT work together.

Hard Drive- Fine.
Optical- Excellent drive.
CF 4850 will be amazing, especially at 50% off. Sell me one too
Good OS.

well see the problem is, i dont know how to overclock... and i woudlnt want to wreck something haha. So i dunno if i will be doing it. Alright so 9450 it is. And, i took a look at the Asus p5Q board, looks pretty good, its about 50 dollars cheaper too

It is so easy a 12 year old can do it. There are lots of guides on these forums on how to O/C.

Unless you completely push it overboard, or put in a stupid number you cannot damage anything. The motherboard will shutdown to prevent it.

If you're going to crossfire stick with and x38/x48 board.

so with a intel mobo you can't overclock? why not??

Intel boards don't offer the options. Intel boards are made to run stable systems rock solid and for OEMs, not to overclock or tweak.