I wouldn't panic too much about flashing the BIOS. Most boards these days have built-in flashing routines, so you can boot straight into a flasher, and then load the file from a USB key. The BIOS flasher can tell whether or not the BIOS is meant for your motherboard, and will basically keep you from screwing anything up too badly. The only thing to fear is a power failure during the flashing process, which can be bad. Some boards have a dual-BIOS setup so that a bad flash can't wreck the board, but I tend to think a UPS is a good idea anyway. You only need enough power to hold the machine up for a couple of minutes, and pretty much any piece of junk will do that fine.

(I recommend an APC 1400 unit, new or used; you can get those for like $300 new now. They're really good, and will hold up most computer setups for like 15 or 20 minutes. I use mine constantly; just yesterday it kept me connected to a game of TF2 right through a 30-second power failure, and it would have comfortably lasted far longer.)

If you're buying the machine primarily for games, you may prefer a faster dual-core processor, instead of the slow quad. You can easily OC the quad to match the stock speeds of the duals, but you say you don't want to do that, and I don't particularly blame you. You can get duals at 3.1Ghz for about $190. If you're not going to OC, and you just want to game, that's both cheaper and faster for your purposes. You'll probably be able to add a quad later if it becomes an issue.

You might want to consider the ATI 4850 or 4870, depending on which fits into your budget. They're MUCH faster than the 9800s -- they're faster, generally, than even the new 260s and 280s, and they're really well-priced. ATIs are the cards to buy right now. Their drivers used to be very bad, but they've improved tremendously, and I think you'd be very happy with either. (one annoyance is that you have to install .NET on XP for the control panel to work, but given the otherwise sterling quality of the drivers, I forgive them.)

You probably wouldn't mind faster RAM, particularly if you go quadcore. Be aware that you should get RAM that will at least work at the stock 1.8 volts, because it can be impossible to get the board booted to crank the voltage up. Many performance RAM pieces require 2.1v to even boot, and voltage isn't part of the autodetect protocols. So, you have a shiny motherboard and shiny RAM, both of which will just love each other, but you have no way to boot the board to tell it to crank the voltage up. This is frustrating.

Solution: buy the cheapest stick of 1.8v you can find (generally about $10) as an insurance policy. If you don't use it, toss it in a drawer. If the machine won't boot with the performance RAM, use the cheapo stick to boot it, set the voltage and timings properly, and then power down and swap.

You might like the Samsung Spinpoint hard drives. They're fast and VERY quiet. This won't be a major difference, but the Spinpoints are very nice.

I don't know Cooler Master's quality for power supplies. I like PC Power and Cooling the best. This Silencer 500 is likely to be very good indeed. Corsair is also testing extremely well. Seasonic is very good in the 'super quiet but high quality' bracket. (don't know how much noise matters to you.) 650W is more than you'll probably need, but it does give you headroom. With a quad and a single video card, a 500 should be fine, and a PCPAC 500 like I linked will be way more than you need. (they use a single-rail design, so you always have all the power on all the lines.) Hell, a 430 would probably be okay, but 500 gives you some overhead.

I haven't used the Samsung DVDs. I've been using Pioneer drives for many years; it looks like the current version is the DVR-116. I love these drives to death. They're quiet and super reliable. But if you want Lightscribe, the cheapest Pioneer I see is $60, so I'd probably try the Samsung if that actually matters.

I don't have broad experience with cases, but I've been using Antec for quite awhile. I have a P182SE and I think it's the most fantastic thing ever for quiet computing. With tweaking, it's much quieter, sitting at my desk, than the server in the room across the hall. The Cooler Master may be fine. I'm just not familiar with it. Pay attention to other opinions.

You should be fine with those parts. And it looks like you shouldn't run into any trouble with those fairly mainstream choices. Check the comments under the case to see if there are any troubles fitting large video cards. Bios flashing shouldn't be necessary, but if you see it alot in comments then figure out why they need to do it. Maybe it's for a just released cpu or something. I bought the EP35-DSL motherboard and didn't have to flash.

But I'm pretty much with Malor in that (personally) I would make a few of the changes he suggested.

Get a ATI 4850 instead of 9800+ gtx. Mainly because I think you can get similar performance at a decent savings. A few 4850s are $150ish on Newegg last time I checked.

Get a Dual-core instead of Quad for gaming. I just don't think many games out there and in the foreseeble future will make much use out of quad cores. For video encoding though they can help speed things up although still unless you're doing alot of encoding then the difference probably isn't that great. ***** (note: You can get an E2160 dual core Intel cpu for under $70 and overclock it to run like $200 cpus without changing the fan. I got mine up to 2.7ghz with a simple bios setting change and played Crysis all the way through with no problems. I couldn't hit 3ghz. Computer would reboot when I had it that fast. But some people can get it going that fast. YMMV as it depends a bit on the silicon you get.)

PC Power and Cooling Silencer 500W power supply. I just trust them more. You do pay a bit more and although I've never had trouble with my cheaper power supplies, both my parents had their cheapo Power Supplies blow on them during the last few years in computers I built for them.

I disliked ATI for a long time, but I ran an x1950 on my Mac for awhile before it melted. (Apple's fault, as far as I can tell, not ATI's.)

I thought it was excellent. And the image quality was superb, better than the 8800GTS that replaced it.

While ATI's new cards are good, I don't like the fact that they run hotter and uses more power to the NV equivilent.

Also, I find that NV has much better 3rd party vendors like BFG, EVGA, XFX. LIfe time warranty, step-up (not for XFX) and good CSR are always good.

Finally, the new PhysX via gfx card thing make NV cards better value in my eyes. Couple years from now, your 9800GTX+ should still be useful as a physics accelerator.

I use both Nvidia and ATI. I've always just gone with who has the best bang for the buck card. Both companies are good, but both make not so good products sometimes. I think with this latest iteration of cards the ball has bounced back in ATI's favor.

Once you get the stuff, consider installing the 64-bit version of Vista, especially since you have 4 gigs of ram, unless you have a lot of old apps or some really old printer or something. It'll be far more stable and efficient for you.

Even if you are a big Nvidia fan, I would go for the 4850 if I were you, it's the same price for significantly better performance and it's going to be more likely to have driver improvements in the future since it's a newer architecture.

And as others had said, if you got a CPU like the E8500, you'll get better performance for about $80 less.

If you don't plan on overclocking, you get a Cooler Master case, and it's not going to be scrunched in the corner with poor ventilation, an aftermarket cooler is unnecessary.

I built a gaming rig recently, and I totally recommend the ATI 4850. Excellent value for price, but it does run a bit hot. The latest drivers and a workaround on the profiles should set your temps to more acceptable levels.

On a sidenote, I got a E7200 for a processor, mainly because it OC's like a beast. Now, I know you don't want to OC, but, I'm still using my stock cooler. Why? It runs quiet, and with my CPU OC'ed to 3.2Ghz (from 2.53), I still get nice temps all the way. Real Temp registered a max temp of 61º Celsius, during a benchmark that lasted about 30 hours. Since I rarely get up to 100% load for long periods of time, I find that my stock cooler, for now, does it's job well. Of course that I can't go to 3.6Ghz or 3.8 without upgrading it, but, as I said, for now, it is sufficient.

So, with proper ventilation (this is a must, make sure the air flows inside your case, every component will benefit from it), and without OC'ing, the stock cooler should be fine.

Awesome! Have fun building it and welcome to the best gaming experience out there! (I'm such a PC fanboi).

Post here if you run into any walls. We have tons of people that can help.

The most exciting part is coming up: getting everything in the mail. Hopefully, you won't have any hicups during your assembling process.

Oh if you don't know already, you should put your PC together (CPU, RAM, GFX card, HDD) before you get them into the case. That way you can sort out any possible problems that would otherwise be more troublesome to fix after you have everything mounted.

Good Luck! And Have Fun!

Well you are looking for a clean (dust free) area that won't give off static charges. So don't build-it on the carpet floor like a buddy of mine did...... (his build did not go well)

I did mine on my kitchen table. Seemed to work fine.

Just during the proccess make sure you keep yourself grounded so you don't give off any static charges.

I kinda prefer silently whispering to life.
Cars+loud=good
Computer+loud=bad

I just use the box that comes with the motherboard. I put the static bag for the mobo in between the mobo and the box though, but that is mainly for easier transport of the mobo and its contents should you need to lift it up a little bit, etc.

It is alive!

After going out for dinner and beer on Friday night, I went to town on assembling the beast and arrived at the moment of truth at about 3 a.m. It powered on, despite some issues with the power/reset buttons, and the six or so fans started whirring, but I didn't get any signal to my monitor. That sucked, because that was the last thing I expected to cause problems. I was dead tired and out of patience at that point, so I went to sleep a half hour later without any resolution.

I got back to it this morning and realized the IP 35 Pro has a little display that monitors the POST process, so even though I didn't have a display I discovered that it did in fact reach the point of booting up without problems. That was pure relief -- all my hardware works. Then I plugged the monitor back in and it worked just fine. More relief -- I can see what's going on and get into the BIOS. I think I started missing some of the details on Friday night since I was so ready for bed.

I kind of pumped my fists and announced to my girlfriend that it WORKS! I went and installed Vista 64 a little while ago (surprisingly quick install) and I'm running and posting from it now. This is rad. Seems like this rig is pretty smokin' fast.

Sadly, I don't have any PC games to try out, but I think I'm going to sell some 360 games this week so I can justify buying TF2 for a second platform. I'll probably grab the Crysis demo so I can see what all the graphical fuss is about, and play with Vista some more.

Anyway, so far, so good.

Sweet! I always love hearing comp success stories. The bios LED is one of the reason I love the IP35. It help so much when things go wrong so you can tell if its the mobo or not.

Download many demos and get the orange box or just tf2 on steam. Hopefully we will see you in stans soon!

You picked a great time to build a rig. We have so many PC games being released.

What video card did you end up with? I'm hoping it's not NVidia -- there's rumors that there are widespread problem with almost all of their chips in 65 and 55nm, with premature failure rates in the high teens.

According to the rumor I read (which isn't confirmed, so don't take this as fact yet), they're not going to recall the chips, and in fact will continue to sell the known-defective ones alongside good ones, because they simply can't afford not to. If they junk the defective parts, they'll be in major financial trouble, where if they go ahead and ship them, they can shift a lot of the pain onto us.