Building a system for longevity

I'm looking to build a quiet gaming system with longevity in mind. I have never build a computer from scratch, but I'm comfortable swapping out / adding components to existing machines. I clearly have a few days worth of reading to do to get up to speed on all the different options, but here is the game plan and questions I've got so far:



APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: asap, most likely within the week

BUDGET RANGE: Probably 1000-1500 after rebates (see question below)

SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: Gaming, movies / media center, work (I'm assuming any gaming rig will cover my work needs)

PARTS NOT REQUIRED: Keyboard, mouse, speakers, monitor (have a loaner 1680x1050 for a few months, then I might have to replace)

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: anything reliable newegg, tigerdirect seem popular (no sales tax in NJ a definite plus)

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: NJ-USA

PARTS PREFERENCES: none

OVERCLOCKING: Yes (if I'm going to relearn this stuff, might as well do it right)

SLI OR CROSSFIRE: Yes

MONITOR RESOLUTION: currently 1680x1050, will likely upgrade to a 1920x1080 or 1920x1200 in the near future

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: prefer quiet machine with a decent upgrade path in the future




PLAN:
x58 motherboard with a Intel core i7 (not sure which one) and a large RAM capacity. Hopefully, when this current build starts showing its age, I can upgrade to gulftown or whatever the best chip is for the platform, max out the ram, and update the video cards for a decent refresh that is relatively cheap once intel moves on to another architecture, DDR-4, etc.


Questions:
In terms of price, how much extra bang for the buck to get moving the price range around...ie sub-1k, 1-1.5k, 1.5-2k, etc. I'm definitely not going above $2,000 but if I can save a bit without much of a performance hit or if a few hundred bucks will get me a lot more longevity, I have some flexibility with price.


I will hopefully start posting parts later today once I get a bit more reading done.


Thanks in advance for any help, it is much appreciated.

I know you think you'll be able to upgrade, but in reality I wouldn't count on anything you buy today to be worth upgrading in say 2 years. New things will come out that will make whatever technology you use today obsolete.

For example in about 18 months pcie-3.0 is supposed to come out, so in two years, you'll be able to buy motherboard\graphics combos that just because of pcie-3.0 will be twice as fast as anything out today. USB 3.0 and 6 GB/s SATA are other things.

I think about $1k is where you start to get diminished returns. I would look at the p55 chipset instead of the x58. You get more bang for the buck. x58 gives you tri-channel memory, but everything I read says you won't notice much difference. Also, newer p55 boards have 2 pcie 16x slots, so you can double up your graphics card the same as a x58 system. That being said, choosing x58 is a good choice also.

If you have access to a MicroCenter, I would get the processor from them. They're by far the cheapest for processors.

That's true. A P55 motherboard would have to use a third-party chip to add support for two full-speed PCI-E 16x lanes. It's not a big deal, though, since the latest benchmarks show very little speed difference between 16x crossfire and 8x crossfire.

That's either a typo or they're using a third-party chip. The P55 does not have enough lanes to drive two 16x PCI-E slots on its own. It's a limitation of the actual chipset.