How this came to be

Here I am, ready to build my first gaming computer. I spent a lot of time preparing for this (reading reviews, how-tos and stuff) so I decided to document my build from the start for anyone interested, and maybe this can help someone else trying to build a budget gaming PC.

So I have been wanting to build my own computer for a few years now, but haven't quite thought about it until about a year ago. I began deciding on my budget and what I wanted to be able to do with this machine. Of course I wanted to be able to play games on it and I didn't want to spend too much.
I decided on a combined budget of $1200. I felt like this was reasonable enough to spend on a machine that I would be using for the next few years and it allowed me to still buy the high end parts that I needed for gaming. I'm not a hard core gamer but I would still like to get into games like Team Fortress, Counter Strike, Company of Heroes, and Call of Duty. The main game that I'm waiting for is Starcraft II. Starcraft has been the only game I've been playing for a while mostly due to the limitations of my current computers, and the unwillingness to spend money on games when I still find Starcraft (original and broodwar) highly entertaining.
I began to shop for parts and comparing cases about last August. After months of thinking about this I decided that once I finished my finals I was going to buy the parts and build.

Here is what months of painstaking decisionmaking and online price comparison got for me:
Processor - Intel Core 2 Quad 6600 Kentsfield
Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775
Video Card - EVGA e-GeForce 8800GT 512MB
Case - Cooler Master Centurion 590
Case Fans - 1x Cooler Master 120mm Blue LED, 4x Hiper HFF-1N12N 120mm Transparent, 1x HIPER HFF-1N08N 80mm Transparent
CPU Cooler - Masscool 8WA741 92mm
Power Supply - Corsair VX550w
Memory - G Skill 4 GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM 1000 (2 DIMMs)
Hard Drive - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250410AS 250GB
Optical Drive - Pioneer DVR-215DBK 20x SATA
Monitor - KDS K-2237MDWB Black 22"
Keyboard - Logitech UltraX
Mouse - Logitech VX Nano (already own, just thought I would list it as it is part of the new system now)

Well thats it. All of the parts I decided to splurge on. I'll write a detailed review of how I came to these decisions along with prices and where to buy a little later.

|:^)