Need advice/comments on new gaming system

[chai]

Intel Xeon C2Q X3220
Gigabyte EP-45-DS3R
Kingston DDR2-800 2GB x 2
Sapphire ATI 4850 x 2
Western Digital 640 GB HDD x 2
LG DVDRW Sata 20x speed

Unsure:
Casing: Cooler Master RC590 or Centurion 5 or others
PSU: Cooler Master Extreme 550w

I have the monitor, just going for the CPU atm. Trying to keep costs about US$1200-1400. I am kind of going for Not planning to overclock, so I skipped high performance RAM. I have a problem though in figuring what PSU/Casing which will fit the lot. I also considered a plain Intel C2Q 6600 2.4ghz, Asus P5Q Pro and a few other P45 motherboards. Do give feedback on anything I could skimp on

I would love to see some comments on this build before I actually buy it, thanks.

 

[th_username]

go with q6600

 

[dirtmountain]

Tweaktowns article about crossfire on a P45. Gonna be new reviews at Anandtech and here at Toms within the next few days.
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1472/intel_p45_vs_x48_crossfire_performance/index.html

 

[shadowthor]

Do you plan to crossfire in the future? The P45 mobo won't cut it, you need a x38 or x48.

 

[chai]

The Xeon's a little US$20 difference over the 6600, and apparantly I heard from my dealer that it has 30% more performance. Not sure if it's really the case though.

Regarding Crossfiring, most likely I will not make any changes to this build in the future, save for filling up the RAM slots. Reasons for going P45? Price and DDR2 support. A x48 will easily double my cost of my motherboard, for a little bit of performance increase from 8-8 to 16-16. Apparantly, most testers find that difference negligible, for the moment at least. So are they any really worthwhile changes to this motherboard without racking up the price too much?

Thanks for the comments so far, keep them rolling in.