Needin' some good advice

[L1n3arA]

Hi there everybody, first timer here on tom's hardware, I stumbled across this site recently and it seemed like a great place for solving my little delima. Like many new system builders such as my self I am sure the question has crossed our minds at especially this point to go down the i7 road and future proof our investment for some time, or take advantage of the "cream of the crop" of current lga 775 components and build a major a$$ kicker with a minimum expenditure of dinero.
Goal: a system on which I can play the latest games but still be able to perform well under the demands of solidworks and other cad software (maya also) I know I can't really have a gaming pc and a true workstation in the same build so I'm leaning more towards the gaming end here...

Budget: max budget will be around $1700

Here is my build thus far, please advise on what I could improve on here, especially other options concerning the gc, and what would be the ideal solution playing games like cod 4, crysis etc.

EVGA 132-YW-E180-A1 NVIDIA nForce 790i SLI

Intel e8500

CORSAIR DOMINATOR 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2000

W.D. WD1001FALS 1TB

CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W

Antec Nine Hundred Mid Tower Case

ZALMAN CNPS9500 Heat Sink

SAMSUNG 22X DVD Burner

EVGA 01G-P3-1281-AR GeForce GTX 285

Western Digital VelociRaptor WD1500HLFS 150GB

I haven't yet put together a part list for an i7 build but I will if I can get some good feedback & criticism to help me along the way! thank-you to anyone who can leave me some feedback!

 

[dirtmountain]

I'd really look over an i7 build rather then a E8500 and 790i setup.

 

[Proximon]

Yep, to clarify, Nvidia chipsets aren't very good. By going with an X58 motherboard you avoid the Nvidia chipsets while still retaining the ability to SLI.

Now, if you don't intend to SLI, that's a whole different matter. In that case get a P45 chipset, and perhaps a Q9550.

 

[PsyKhiqZero]

The improvements in the antec 902 really are worth the extra cash. better HDD mounting system, built in fan speed controllers and air filters.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129058

For 1700 a core i7 build would be best. But if your going to do a core 2 build then I suggest ditching the ddr3. Go with 8 GB (4GBx2). Core 2 systems really can't do much with ddr3.

I'd maybe ditch the Velociraptor. If you build a core 2 with ddr 2 you should have saved enough to get a decent solid state for the OS and apps. (I assume that's what the velociraptor was for) But in any case games do not show any major improvements with HDD performance.