Decided to go with the ASUS cm 6850, i7, 750gig hd, 8 gigs ram, slower HD, 5400rpm. Upgraded the PCU to 500 watts, put in a GTX 550 ti.

Had troubles with my GTX 550 ti, was causing crashes and I understand from talking to a few folks, that happend to them too. Anyway, Popped for the entry level Quadro 600. Like it. Though I don't do GPU rendering, the opengl is good on it in Carrara and in Lightwave VPR, some pretty texture heavy models came out crisp using it. I am happy with it.

Cinebench CPU is 6.87, GPU was higher on my 550, but I don't game and the Quadro 600 has the GPU rating of 24.8. Passmark rating on my computer is 2071.

Overall, I am pleased. I am looking forward to doing some animations with this and see how rendering holds up.