Please Rate This Setup

That setup is pretty good. You don't really need 1GB for the 9800GTX+ unless you plan to play games with max AA on, or if you plan to go SLi on larger monitors.

lol, I have a 9800GTX+ with 2 connectors, and it was totally fine.
The cards come with plenty of molex adapters, so you don't need to worry about running out of PCI-e connectors.

As for the same range, ATI's competition is the 4850.
The 4770 is cheaper but is less powerful. The GTX260 and 4870 are more expensive but more powerful.

Western Digital + 1

Dont get the 9800GTX+...get the GTS 250...they are basically the same chip but on a smaller die, hence less heat and better efficiency...
Another good P45 mobo
ASUS P5Q Pro

And change the PSU...dont go with CM extreme power...they are not high quality PSUs...
For that price, you can better quality PSUs...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817371015

And those Seagate drives were having issues previously...Instead you can get the WD Black 1TB or Seagate 1TB 7200.12...

And go with better quality PSUs...
This 550W PSU is more than suffice for that setup...and it is modular too...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817341022

thanks guys... keep your views coming... I will continue my research ( will it ever end? I wonder :-) )

Is there a reason why you want a combo ddr2/ddr3 motherboard?

I would think a more basic EP45-UD3L would serve you better.

It might have changed, but CM psu is a tier 5 unit on this list:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forum [...] p?t=108088
look for a tier 2 unit form corsair, PC P&C, seasonic, antec to name a few quality psu vendors.

On a P45 chipset, DDR3 will not be significantly faster in gaming performance. 4gb of DDR2-800 ram will be fine. Don't pay extra for lower latencies, it won't matter much either.

I think Samsung makes the panels for many other monitor vendors. I suspect that they keep the best samples for themselves. A monitor is a long term purchase, it is worth stretching to get the best you can afford. Look into a quality 24" 1920x1200 unit.

@HW98: In fact I am an AMD fan, but this time lot of things got in the way like cost, heat, CPU clock speed, etc... so decided on Intel setup! However, if u think a under gudget, cool & powerful replacement is available for my above config, with AMD as core, do post it, i will check it out for sure... thanks!

@geofelt: Even I got that info, but felt that ddr2 might phase-out or become costlier than ddr3 at some point in future... so planned to stick with combo for now! thanks. will check out the 24" monitors too... if only $$$ gets adjusted ;-)