[seek3r]

As someone who's built a lot of machines (and, ironically, is probably getting a mac pro as my next desktop because it's a very competitive price at the student discount - comparable to building my own in the same class) I'll try and respond. I'm kinda tired right now (don't want to sleep though) so pardon my grammar :-P.

The case - I've heard good things about cooler master, but in general I usually reccmend lian-li or antec (particulary the antec p180). Whatever case you buy, you may end up replacing fans, bear that in mind. Also, a note on that, keep an eye on a)fan size b)number and c)placement. 120mm fans for ex are either quieter than 80mm while pushing the same amount of air, or push more air at the db. The number is important both for noise level and airflow *and* how many fan plugs you have on your MB. If you want the mobo to manage the fan speed for you (as opposed to manually or with temp sensors on the fans), you're going to want to have enough plugs. Lastly, placement. I personally don't like top fans if I can avoid it, since I tend to prop my feet up on my comps. I *can't* use side-fans at all since I keep my machines in a row under my desk, there's no room for the air to blow. Keep that in mind.

The motherboard - overkill is an interesting question. Whether you need all the features of the board or not though, Asus is a good brand. One thing you may want to know is that Asus boards are both known for being exceedingly stable (good) and very picky on ram (bad). Make sure the ram you buy is cert. to work with the board, or at least find a forum post of someone using it in the board. I'd reccomend pairing an intel chip with an intel board if you decide not to go with Asus, same stability, though a bit priceier and the older chipsets for core/core2 on any of the manufacturers have some problems with ram timings, so beware.

Power supply - Most likely enough, though considering an 880 by itself draws like 180watts at full power (and you said you'll be gaming) you might want to consider something a bit more powerful. If you stay with that class and you want a quieter supply, the Antec phantom is a nice power supply. I'd also recommend JustPC power supplies from personal experience and I've heard good things about the OCZ supplies recently.

The gpu - the 8800 (gts or x) is an awesome card, and smokes any of the 7-series cards. It's also a lot quieter, I'd recommend using it. You may also want to look at ATI cards, though I'm personally a fan of nvidia (better linux drivers - and you said you'd be running linux too).

the fan - zalman makes nice cooling, I will point out though that with good airflow in the case the stock heatsink and fan are probably fine if you're not over clocking, and that would save you some money.

Arctic Silver, it's the only way to go. Make a hershey kiss dolly on the cpu and smush when you put it on :-P.

Vista - I would wait, particularly for gaming. nvidia's new drivers *are* far better than they were, but the XP drivers are still more stable, and the lack of overhead on xp compared to vista (and lack of need, since there are no dx10 games out yet) would make me recommend using XP for now. You can always buy vista later (and cheaper - and after service pack 1 :-P.