Miller gives you solid advice.
The AGP standard is on it's way out, considering PCIe X16 has 4 times the bandwidth, I would strongly urge you to consider PCIe architecture. Thats going to keep your investment viable for much longer in terms of upgradeability.
I completely agree with Miller's assessment of sound cards. I own the X-Mystique, and it rocks.
I would go higher with my processor also. You will definitely need one of those hardware encoding video cards if you go with a 2GHz processor. Windows MCE2005 requires a minimum processor speed of 1.6GHz with a hardware encoding video card. 3GHz for software encoding,
GBPVR has a large following around here, and because it's free, you should see if that meets your needs, that's a possible $100+ savings, so you have nothing to lose. The guy that wrote that software has given support through this forum before.
I use MCE and it meets my needs. It's really a matter of preference, so check out the free stuff first.
In terms of cooling/noise, the larger fans turn slower=less noise. The problem with these things is that when you silence the loudest fan(usually the stock CPU cooler) then you hear the video card fan. quiet that, and you hear the chip fan. following are the case fan/s.
Once I got to the chip fan, I decided that was good enough. I don't hear anything over the movie/music.
Welcome to the dark side...
