Hahah what? Yeah, they work as well as dual cores, 65nm dual cores. You can overclock a 8400 on air to 4.0ghz without breaking stock voltage. You are essentially getting a E6600 with two extra useless cores if you buy that processor.
uh...no, you aren't. Please don't give advice on something you don't have experience with. And it is never a good idea to start telling anyone to "overclock" anything. You may do it, but it isn't something you need to be spouting to others.
Q6600 is the cpu of choice for mid-high pc's at the moment. 2GB + XP is really the best way to go still. Don't fret about DX10 as there isn't any reason yet to worry about it (ie no real true native DX10 games that won't run in DX9, and every DX10 game out looks the same in DX9 and actually runs better in DX9).
I just ordered a 20" widescreen 5ms LCD from Newegg for a customer for I think $189. Does 1680x1050, looks bright, sharp, and already had a good chunk of newegg reviews up in the 4-5 egg range (however always take newegg ratings/rantings with a grain of salt).
SLI is nice for the future, but for right now, the card(s) you are looking at will easily do 1600x1200/1680x1050 without need of a second card. Good power supplies are the backbone of a high-end gaming rig.
I tend to lean more towards the Corsair, Antec Trio, and OCZ psu's but now PCP&C is owned by OCZ and they have improved their designs (ie made them a lot quieter than before, but still not really all that quiet).
I agree with other poster about getting an X-Fi sound card. If you are a gamer, Creative cards are what you want. They aren't as good for movies and music (though they aren't bad at all, I own more than a few Live, Audigy, and X-Fi's), but hardly noticeable unless you are an audio snob. But in gaming, they generally are the best.
Zalman makes great heatsinks. Popular ones right now that are probably a little better (but not by much, it's 6 of one, half-dozen of the other really...which means taster's choice) are the Thermalright Ultra 120 stuff (few different models) and the Tuniq Tower. I've experience with all of them and my personal preference is always Thermalright, but that Tuniq is pretty awesome.
I always prefer Intel chipset motherboards, but of course you can't have SLI with them...choices choices, always tough choices. Really though, with 4x cores @ 2.4Ghz each, there's simply no need to overclock, and with 1680x1050 widescreen monitor, there's really no need for more than what you have (nor again, a need for any overclocking).
Evga does have a great step-up program.
http://www.diy-street.com/forum = if you want to talk to others who are "gurus" (or if you just want to learn how to do something, like install watercooling, overclock, modify, discuss pro's/cons of cases, gpu's, RAM, blah blah blah).
