A more moderate machine for me Now that I've built my wife her machine I felt it was time for my own. Here's what I'm thinking so far:

Processor   - AMD Athlon II X3 440     - $87
Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-790XT-USB3   - $125
Memory      - Corsair 4GB (2x2GB)      - $110
Disk        - Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB - $90
DVD         - Samsung SH-S223L         - $26
GPU         - MSI 5770 1GB             - $165
OS          - Windows 7 Home Premium   - $180
Case        - Coolmaster ATCS 840      - $180
PSU         - corsair CMPSU-750HX      - $150

Total - $1,113 priced on NewEgg

This is intended as an interim solution. I was overly optimistic when building my wife's machine in regards to how long I could continue using my current primary in that role. Had I realized I would be building two I would have done things differantly. I don't want to get hit by two $2k-$3k machines in need of replacement at the same time so I'm trying to postpone a major investment by 12-18 months. We run five machines, two of which are primary, i.e. his and hers. We want to get away from complete system replacement and migrate components through five cases/psu's. The case and psu above is out of line for this system, but it's my primary case/psu going forward. I'm debating whether I ought to just get an appropriate secondary case/psu and retire the whole system in 12-18 months and buy a primary case/psu at that time. So we're transitioning through both price points and pre-built to build your own. I'm trying to manage and smooth out the cost of transition. This machine will be a development machine with Visual Studio 2010 under Windows 7. The development will be graphics/multi-media so DirectX 11 and access to the ATI SDK are important to me. I already have NVidia cards so I have access to their SDK. The next generation of this machine will still be development but also include database/file/web server and experimental workbench. Graphics performance isn't as important as features, but I will do some light gaming on it. Mostly RPG's which aren't very graphically demanding rather than FPS's. I expect to replace the mb, cpu and memory in 12-18 months so I don't want to spend a lot on that. They will be used for 5-6 years though not as primary. As such I feel USB 3.0 is important since in that timeframe consumer electronics will likely be able to use more than 50 MB/s. I'm not as concerned about SATA III in this machine. I could add a board providing USB 3.0 at a later date though. I want the 790X chipset though for one 16 lane PCI Express 2.0 slot. Mostly for the next 12-18 months. Once it's a secondary machine it won't matter. It will likely be running whatever card I put in it now. I'm in no hurry to run out to buy this. Mostly I want it for Visual Studio 2010 which isn't out yet and that I don't have to get the moment it's available. Unlike my wife's which was I already bought it so rather late now I could certainly still change my plans. I'm particularly interested in those suggestions from those running multiple build it yourself machines and have been for awhile. So how you manage the evolution and retirement of machines over the long haul.

When I started thinking I could just retire the whole system in 12-18 I went back and looked at what I can buy off the shelf. At $700 I can buy a better system and add in a gpu. It's not a comparable case and psu, but it would make more sense to buy that when I build in 12-18 months.