About a week ago, I decided that the old rig, which was cutting edge 5 years ago, was so long in the tooth that I needed a new computer. Not willing or able to spend the huge amount that I did the last time, I came up with the following:

Intel Core i7-870 Lynnfield 2.93GHz 8MB L3 Cache
GIGABYTE GA-H55N-USB3
Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
Mushkin Enhanced Silverline 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333
LG Black 10X BD-ROM SATA Internal UH10LS20
Silvertone ST45SF 450W
Gigabyte GV-N460OC-1GI GeForce GTX 460 1GB
ASUS VW266H Black 25.5" Widescreen LCD Monitor

From my prior machine, I took the following:
IBM Model M Part No. 1390131
Creative Labs Gigaworks S750 7.1 Speakers
Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAKS 320GB 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
Logitech LX8 Cordless Laser Mouse
Roland UM-1X USB interface

Windows 7 Home Premium Retail

Things I have learned in this install:

Lian Li cases require a degree of intuition. This are not always obvious. It is a very good case, however, it requires 6-screws to take off a panel. The right panel also supports the motherboard. The front audio connectors are not the tightest.

This case requires disciplined cable management. There is not a lot of room and three very exposed fans. You don't want small wires to fall within the path of the blades. Get some twisties, they work well.

Do not plug anything into the USB 3.0 ports until you have fully installed the motherboard drivers. The USB 3.0 controller is a separate NEC chip.

My Blu-ray drive came with PowerDVD 8, which is sufficient for Blu-ray playback, except for 3-D Blu-ray discs. The audio codec on the motherboard is the ALC892, which supports Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD Master Audio. The Geforce GTX 460 is the first nVidia card that can also support these codecs without downsampling. The monitor can support HDCP over DVI, and also has an HDMI port. However, PowerDVD would give blue screens when playing Blu-rays until I updated to the beta 460 drivers.

I could have saved some money by buying a Core i5 and took advantage of the integrated Intel HD graphics for HD content, but I would also like to play games like Starcraft II and Dragon Age: Origins at a decent resolution, features and framerate.

I purchased the retail version of Windows 7 in order to have 32-bit and 64-bit installations. I grabbed the 320GB drive out of the old system (the newest drive in the old system), for the 32-bit version. The 32-bit version of Windows 7 seems a lot more compatible than the 64-bit version with older games and such. However, only 3.46GB of my 8GM is useable in 32-bit, so it is not really forward thinking. While I could have purchased Windows 7 Professional OEM for a little less money, Windows 7 32-bit is alot more useful. (System Shock 2 works perfectly with very little effort).

The monitor has a native 1920x1200 resolution. I cannot go to 16:9 monitors just yet.