Hi suryad, I was just researching a similar system myself and found your thread was active. Checking on pricewatch for lower-cost alternatives, you may want to look into: Case: SkyHawk MSR4615 D7 (www.shg.com.tw) [$30.49 pricewatch] -EATX board specification 12"x13" -ALUMINUM, which is a big plus in my book, weighing in around 13 lbs. My current case is a skyhawk aluminum, and it is very sturdy, very light, and very easy to access. Plus there will be even more room for a water cooling setup, even though mine fits easily in the smaller case. RAM: I can't seem to find out whether ECC/Reg is an absolute necessity, but it does seem to run a bit slower than the unbuffered/non-registered. Pricewatch found me 2 sticks of pc3200 512gb ECC/Reg CAS 3 for $49 each. I think with dual channel ddr, it's best to install them in pairs? So 2x512gb for each of the CPU's for a 2gb total? PSU: HEC ACE480UB (www.hecgroupusa.com) [$61.56 www.avadirect.com] Of the power supplies recommended on the Tyan website, the Zippy HP2-6460P is only rated at 460W. Taking that into account, the fact that it wants EPS12V, and dual SLI, I found this PSU. 2 fans, dual rails... sounds good to me. I actually went out and bought this one last week for my current system when the old PSU died. HDD: Seagate Cheetah ST3146854LW 15krpm 146gb u320 (www.seagate.com) [$299 re-cert on pricewatch] Comparable to the Hitachi's you have listed, but might be a bargain deal... Of course, I'm only drooling over the specs too. And just trying to find ways to make it affordable for my own budget ($2,000 still might be out of range) In all honesty I would probably have to start with one cpu/gpu/ram combo. But with a motherboard that lets you scale up so easily, it just seems like the right place to start.