$2000 - $2500 for Gaming build

For more information and more detailed advice, here are a few things to help out:

Overclock: No as I do not know how to do this.

Optical: I do not have to have a Blue ray as I dont watch blue ray movies. However I would consider it as I plan on this build to last me for the next 3 years. I do like the sound of litescribe, I dont make a lot of discs, but it sounds like fun, is it worth it?

Case: I dont need a gaming look to it, I am more conservative in outward appearances.

OS: Vista 64 with Win 7 upgrade.

As mentioned above, I want this to last for 3 years, so speed, video, and ram seem to be most important? I would like to have everything and monitor included for around $2350, but I can stretch it to $2500. Thanks again in advance.

I would say spend $1200 on it, and use an i7 920 and overclock it since it requires just a few BIOS tweaks.

with the spare money, upgrade the graphics to a 5870 or whatever the top end ATi card is in Q2 2010, and then upgrade the CPU to a hexacore in Q4 2010 as the price should have gone down by then.