Yea I suppose you could of done more like you said with sli cards and water cooling! not hard to do.

For me I try to spend the least amount I can on the motherboard. Not to say I cheap out with a bad board but I don't go full out with all the bells and wistles. & Mainly because my rule of thumb is every 3-4 years I'm rebuilding a new pc anyway. & And like ya said if you want a the new CPU down the raod your going to have no choice but upgrade your processor and everything that plugs into it. But I really am leaning towards just getting a video card upgrade. I'm looking in the $200 range. The GeForce GTX 460's are in that range. Or I like the one you picked out actually. & About the same after rebate. But I'll wait til xmas and see what the deals are. I've read good things about the processor I have and people say they run GeForce GTX 480's fine with there cpu OC'd to 4.18ghz. So I'll squeeze out what I can outta this sucker.

My kids are only 4 and 2 so right now I have a few old hand me downs that I am giving them so they can just do there little videos. But won't be too long I'm fearing before I have to shell out the bux. But they will get my hand me downs and I'll get the new rigs! heheheh. Still your a very nice mom for building your son a sweet box like that! & As long as the grades are up and they stay out of trouble they deserve it.

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I believe in make the world safe for our children, but not our children's children, Because I don't think children should be having sex.