so I've been running with this new system since the holidays but I only just dropped in the new graphics card tonight, which I feel was the finishing touch - at least for the moment. here's what I've been able to pull together for about $400 so far. keep in mind I get employee pricing at micro center and we have access to a lot of OEM components you can't find as easily on newegg or tigerdirect:

• intel i7-3770k: $105 (direct from intel. go ahead, ask.)
• 8gb (for now) kingston hyperX red DDR3-1600: $44
  
• gigabyte z77m-d3h-mvp mATX system board: $65
  
• (just added) nvidia (unbranded reference OEM) geforce GTX 560ti (1GB frame buffer): $63
  
• ocz eliteXstream 800W PSU: $37
  
• 500gb hitachi deskstar 7200rpm hdd, 16mb cache: left over from last system
  
• samsung can't be bothered to find the model number, generic as ballz dvd-rw drive: see above
  
• thermaltake dokker ATX mid-tower with six red LED fans and some kinda LCD/rheostat dial fan controller: $90-something altogether
  
• win7 pro x64: $0 (thank gob for volume license keys!)

yeah it's ok so far. the mechanical drive hurts my benchmark scores but I'm really happy with the new graphics card and I've always loved the CPU.

Nicely done! I have a question for you: I'm hunting for a video card that will work with 3 monitors simultaneously. Idealy no hdmi or vhdci, but if you can't think of any I can find an hdmi-to-dvi harness. I'm also not looking for performance since the customer will be using them for average office work, if you can help me out you'd be a bro for life.

Sammitch, do you have a Kill-a-watt available? I'm interested in the power consumption of that thing off the wall.

I've always wanted to build a true gaming rig (you know, where I can just pop in any game and not worry about finding the best settings that will give me murh efpes) but I'm pretty anal about power consumption. Especially since I use the PC almost 24/7 for work as well.

and doog, ATI's high end cards tout the eyefinity shit, where you can game using three monitors. Most cards nowadays come with at least VGA, DVI, and HDMI support. I myself use the HDMI and VGA to extend my desktop to the couch TV.

If you want cloned screens instead of extensions, it's usually less of a hassle to just get a 1x3 HDMI splitter.

Or alternatively, if you're going to use monitors that can only accept VGA, there's lotsa hdmi-vga, dvi-vga, my penis-vga cable attachments out there.

GeForce GT 640

Pretty awesome especially for that price! What would you get if you popped in an SSD drive instead?

a much better diskmark score. the hdd is really the only thing holding me down at the moment. I'm using a 16gb usb2 flash drive for readyboost caching, but that doesn't get factored into diskmark or most other benchmarks.

I don't know where to find a good software-based power-consumption benchmark for free, but I know I'm certainly using less than 700 watts even when the 560ti starts cranking.

You might try SpeedFan for voltage and temperature stats.

I have a fan controller with six channels of rheostat dials and lcd readouts for that. thanks for the suggestion though.

This is my new home computer:

they say that in the future computers may weigh as little as half a ton thanks to improvements in vacuum-tube technology!