Originally Posted by dready

What he said.

Q9450 CPU
Asus P5Q motherboard (or variant like the deluxe)
4GB Ram, or 2GB if you'll run 32bit (make sure it's a good match for the board)
Good affordable graphics card like an 8800GT
Antec P182 is a nice case (thermaltake and coolermaster are nice too)
Seasonic makes the best power supplies (get an 80-Plus type supply no matter what)
WD Velociraptor for C:\ drive (or two of them in RAID0 for real speed)
Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB for D:\ (this is a damn fast drive)