New desktop for photo processing

For your usage, IMO the i7 860 would suit very well...
i7 860 + ASUS PRO
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?Ite...

RAM + Graphics card -
GSKillz 4GB DDR3 + ASUS HD 5770 - Assuming you will gaming occasionally and not frequently...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?Ite...
Else i you game frequently and intense graphic games, then get the HD 5850...But anyways the board supports Crossfire, so if you feel the need, you can add 1 more HD 5770 in crossfire, that would be very powerful setup...

CASE + PSU -
Antec 300 Illusion + Antec EA 650
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?Ite...

HDD - Samsung F3 1TB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Maybe if the budget allows, certainly this -
Intel G2 80GB SSD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

BD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submi...|27-106-326^27-106-326-TS,27-106-325^27-106-325-TS,27-151-199^27-151-199-TS

And do you have dual monitors or you want 1 more ?? And do you want to game in 2 monitors???

Cool. Thanks for the quick reply.

I was definitely thinking about an i7 when I was originally setting up this build. Out of curiosity though, are the i5s comparable at all? I was looking at some benchmarks and the performance differences with the i7 was negligible in some cases.

Also, since I haven't build a machine in over 6 years, is tri-channel RAM overkill? What would that buy me?

Regarding the dual monitors, I only have one right now. It's a 22" Samsung that has been great. I wouldn't mind just getting another 22" Samsung, whatever the latest model is. Are there any good deals on larger (24"+) monitors out there?

Thanks again.

Gkay09's build looks good. I would stick with the i7 for your use. The Hyperthreading will give you an extra performance boost for photo processing. You're right, for gaming the i5 750 offers nearly identical performance, but for multi-threaded software the Hyperthreading is nice to have.

The triple-channel RAM is for the LGA 1366 chips that use the X58 motherboards. It doesn't offer much of a performance boost in most applications. I would stick with LGA 1156 and dual-channel RAM. You could always bump up the RAM to 8GB on gkay09's build.

Would I be buying myself anything by getting more RAM, like 8GB? My camera shoots 21MP and I just want to make sure my RAW processing is as quick as possible.

That depends on what software you'll be using to edit the photos. If it's 64-bit then I would say you would benefit from 8GB of RAM for editing RAW 21MP photos.

Most likely a combination of Photoshop and Lightroom. For 8GB, is the GSKillz DDR3 RAM still the way to go? I found a combo of the same graphics card and the RAM:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?Ite...

Does this look good?

OK, so I think this is going to be my set up ... roughly:

CPU / Motherboard
Intel Core i7-860 Lynnfield 2.8GHz & ASUS P7P55D-E Pro LGA 1156
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?Ite...
$450

Video Card / RAM
ASUS CuCore Series EAH5770 1GB & G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?Ite...
$490

Hard Drive
Samsung F3 1TB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
$90

Case & PSU
Antec 300 Illusion + Antec EA 650 - Might go for a case that looks less "futuristic"
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?Ite...
$120

Fan / Cooling System
Any recommendations?

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Total (thus far): $1150

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Am I missing anything?

^ That RAM does look good...But you should know that you are paying some premium for those 4GB sticks...
Check out this RAM - lot cheaper
GSKillz DDR3 1066MHz CAS 7 - This is as good as that DDR3 1600MHz CAS 9...If you loosen the timings on this RAM, even this can reach that speeds...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
But if you are not comfortable with changing settings in the BIOS, then stick with your option...

And as for the cooling, this would be my pick...
CM Hyper 212+
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002G1YPH0/ref=s9_simh...

2x4GB sticks will be a lot more expensive than 4x2GB sticks

If you are going 8GB then you'll have to go with a 64bit OS too

For photo editing I recommend a more elaborate storage system in order to provide redundancy for your photo storage, that is unless you already have a server or several external drives. At least go with a pair of internal hard drives so you can back up your files from one to another. If you want to get more elaborate then you could set up a RAID system.