Here’s the system that I’m thinking about purchasing. I’ll be doing mostly video encoding, Photoshop, image processing and some statistics. Windows XP 64. Very little gaming if any at all. All of this will go into an Antec P180 with some additional SATA drives (8 in total). I’d like to OC to 3.6 Ghz and if I get more with little effort I’ll be happy but I’m not going to spend a lot of time on that. I need a stable platform more then I need an extra 5% performance.

1 x GIGABYTE GA-EX38
1 x Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 Yorkfield 2.66GHz
1 x MSI NX8400GS-TD256E GeForce 8400GS 256MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Video Card
1 x OCZ Reaper HPC Edition 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
1 x Antec NeoPower 650 ATX12V / EPS12V 650W Power Supply
1 x Thermalright Ultra-90(P4LGA-775) CPU Cooling Heatsink
1 x Scythe DFS922512M-PWM 90mm Case Fan
2 x Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD 80GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s

My reason for the CPU and MOBO is that I’ll be doing mostly video applications and I need the 8 SATA ports. I understand that the new instruction set on the Q9450 will blow away the Q6600 when doing properly coded video processing.

I’m not married to OCZ RAM but I have it in my current rig and it’s been fine. Maybe I should go with Platinum instead of Reaper. My choice of the Antec PSU is because of the P180 case. It’s a bit tricky because the PSU is mounted at the bottom and I figure that Antec PSUs are designed with longer cables to accommodate this. I could be wrong.

My current system is going to go into an Antec Solo Mid Tower case. My wife will use it for word processing and some statistics work.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
Asus A8N-SLI Premium nForce4
Sapphire Radeon X550 PCI Express 128MB DDR
Antec NeoHE 550
Stock Cooler
3G OCZ Platinum Memory (one of the slots on the MOBO stopped working)

Would the Q9550 provide much additional speed? It does have 8.5 multiplier and is a little faster.
Is the memory a good choice?
Is the PSU big enough? If not I’ll co with the CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX ATX12V because it’s on sale.

I can afford better parts for the computer because this is for a home business but I don’t want to waste money.

If it's not too much more wherever you are, I'd go for 1066 MHz RAM, just to be a bit more future-proof and if you ever want to start overclocking, other than that, I'm extremely jealous.

Since you'll be doing video work, check out the HD2600Pro (or even HD2400Pro or XT). They can offload some decoding functions from the CPU. AFAIK, nVidia's offerings don't have that (but I certainly wouldn't mind being wrong about that).

The board mite just be overkill and a waste of money, i just got a Gigabyte DS3P & it has 8 SATA ports that can be raided & its only £80GBP !!!

I was looking at the DS3P, which is $100 less, but I thought that I might need the higher performance of the X38 when over clocking. I'd be happy to save $100.

I'll have to look into that. Those are the types of things that could help.

The faster memory really isn't much more so I'll look into it.

Don't be jealous, it may be a while before I can find the damn chip

why go for such an expensive cpu ?
If you take the q6600 with a little overclocking there would be a margin of 10 percent or less performance decrease then the q9450 plus you'll save allot of money and spend it on a decent video card.