Building a extreme pc and need advice

What is your total over all budget? Anything already on hand that you want to use?
What size monitor/resolution will you be using? What games are you looking at playing?

I can tell you the WD Raptor 74 doesnt match the rest of the parts. Put in the WD Velociraptor 300GB HDD instead.

Drop the $$ if you got it. Although I would rather build 2 machines around $2k over a couple of years. You'd always have a good machine but you aren't bleeding money. But then again if you like throwing money around go for it. Wasn't there an article that shows standard SLI beating 3-way SLI most of the time? I'm too lazy to look it up though.........

i agree with wr2, the velociraptor is much faster, and are you planning on multiple monitors in the future? or a larger monitor, if not tri sli is a little excessive, also the ddr3 is not a good idea unless you plan to migrate it to a system in the future that utilizes tri channel, in which case, but a cheaper system that is good quality that you can sell later and save some cash

I will switch the the hard drives and I was deciding between 2 4870 x2's and 3 280 gtx's but saw an article that 3 280s beat the 2 4870 x2 in every game fps wise. And is the on-board sound card that good? I am pretty much just planning to use the best computer I can until I turn 18 in a year and a half.

http://www.driverheaven.net/review [...] 9&pageid=1

I think you want to check out some more benchmarks before you make up your mind and start spending.
Is there a particular game you're most interested in? If yes, find out if ATI or Nvidia runs that game best.

I think it would be smart to look at a 27" 1920x1200 LCD monitor and thinking about 2 graphics cards instead of a 24" LCD and 3 GPUs.

Also the Intel Core 2 Quad 3.0Ghz Q9650 is $900 less than the 3.2Ghz QX9770. Most games are GPU limited before they are CPU limited and you end up with charts that look like this: (just 1 video card used here but the concept still applies for 2 or 3 GPU rigs)

+1 for rampage formula and tbh if you're spending like $1200 on a cpu get watercooling!