Dude, I'm going to be building a rig at the end of the year. Depending on how much I'll have left over for my video card I might actually take it. I'll be on a tight budget. $500-600, or $700-800 if I sell my monitor to get a better one, which would then hurt my build by $50 or so. But because my birthday is in February (I'll be building beginning of August), I might be able to get my parents to chip in $100 or so.
Here's what I have so far (that I want):
-Q6600
-4GB RAM (Upgrading to Vista 64-bit later on)
-2x 80/120GB HDD for RAID
-250+ GB for Storage
-Modular PSU
-Case with Side Window (always wanted one)
-GPU: 8800GT or greater
I'm not sure if I can fit all this into a $600 budget. I'm counting on a lot of price drops. Also, because I wasn't into computers until recently, do a lot of sales occur after Thanksgiving on that big sale? My parents are willing to lend me some money to order stuff then if there's a big drop in prices. Although, if there is one, I don't know whether it would be worth it or not, I mean, prices are always dropping. With the release of the Nehalems, I'm hoping that the Q6600 will drop even more. And I won't need an after-market HSF as I won't OC it, until I find necessary.