Hello.  I'm a new guy but I'm an old guy.  I've been working on hardware and software since the days of vacuum tube analog computers.  I spent a lot of time working on mainframes in the 70s and 80s.  I've been building my own machines for as long as I can remember.  Right now I run a dual-core 3 ghz box, but XP will only allow me to see 2 gig of ram, so I'm moving on.  The new box will run Windoze 7 Pro.  Not that I love M$oft, but I spent a lotta time writing code for Windows-based machines and I'm just familiar with a lot of it.  
I've been working with Intel-based machines since the 8088 chip but I prefer AMD processors because....well, just cuz.
I'm a retired programmer but I seem to have found a new career in photography and website design and maintenance.  I run my own linux based server from my home and have numerous systems on what we used to call a TAN (Tiny Area Network.) 
Right now I'm building the Dreadnought, a dual quad-core Opteron based box with a whole buncha goodies.  The build diary is here:
http://www.raytherat.com/dreadnought/Welcome.html
I'm trying to mentally design a liquid cooling system for it.  I'd like to find an external cooling tower and add my own pump(s) and cooling blocks.  I want to cool the disk drives as well as the CPU.  The GPU has its own air cooling system so I'm not gonna worry about it.  Until I start overclocking, I'm gonna use the air cooling in the Cooler Master 932 case.
I'm gonna go start connecting some cables.  
Ray the Rat in the High Desert