Thinking of doing it.
I cant rememeber which mobo I was going to use - it wasnt an Asus this time around because they are using VIA firewire chips which are crap.
I think it was a gigabyte mobo, intel P35 chipset, TI firewire chip, intel quad core @ 2.4Ghz to keep it cheap unless the quad 3Ghz chip comes down in price. Also choosing the newer process G0 stepping CPU - lower power, lower heat etc which is good for keeping the whole machine more reliable and quieter. On memory - probably DDR2 as at any given speed DDR2 will be faster than DDR3, so DDR3 is only worthwhile when it gets alot faster. DDR2 goes upto about 1066Mhz I think and 1333 DDR3 is (I think) not quite at break even point relative to DDR2 at 1066.
As for gfx card - I guess just whatever is current with decent performance from nvidia. Again something with overkill quiet cooling on it.
Dont use stock intel coolers - my experience is they are way under spec'd once in a real machine with loads of harddrives etc, so am using a huge zalman cooler - also stuck one on the graphic card.
Case - antec P180 currently, though might look at one of their rack case next time around.
Hard drives - couple of WD 10000 RPM raptors and a couple of high capacity 7200 rpm of some random make. The raptors are for the OS and project drives, the others for relaiable main storage in a raid config.
Main thing on the case - find something with soft rubber mounting for the hard drives to cut down noise (have a look at that antec case to see what kind of thing they do) and very good airflow that allows for 120mm fans - they are much quieter and shift more air. Good dust filtering is advisable as well - as eventually the cooling fins will clog up with dust otherwise and become near useless.
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