ok the time is getting close for me to start a inte cpu pc build up.
in about one month .
what I want is help in finding the best possible products ( make, models )
if you where to build a dream pc single cpu what parts would you buy? no price limit

pc will be used for , top of the line games, audio & video editing . well it will be my main computer & I want power ! but I don't want a problem pc lol so only the best will do

Well 3.06 P4, 1Gb 3500 DDR, SCSI raid yada yada...

no yada yada
I'm looking for brands & models LOL
what I want to do is take everyones input & do a final build up list
then once I build it bench mark it .
This is for real I don't mind spending the money but I want it to be nasty plain & simple..
so really people I would like your input ( people that are in to hardware & know thee stuff please help me out here )
I have a month to reseach all this

So you're going Intel right? Well the 3.06Ghz is in order then. As for memory, Corsair are a very solid brand.

I'm abit out of the loop as regards the latest P4 motherboards so I'll try and find some reviews.

I'm sure someone will suggest a make of SCSI.

Ultimately Slammer though, you will be paying for it all so make sure *you* are happy with it. It's all well and good us recommending stuff but if you should have probs you have to live with it.

hehe yes it's all good
final build list should sort any possible hardware issue . bottom line with the help of other I should be steered in the right direction

Single proc? I laugh at your puny machine.

SCSI RAID is useless in home computers, go for the best 15k drives out at the time, probably some variety of Seagate Cheetah X15s, and a good LSI controller card. Even the 15ks are overkill, better might be to get some Maxtor Atlas 10kIIIs for quite a bit less and use those instead.

Get at least 1GB of ram, I don't worry about brand too much as long as it works. I use Kingston ECC Registered PC2100 in my machine.

There's virtually no performance difference between 7200rpm IDE drives and 10,000rpm or even 15,000rpm SCSI drives. In fact a single IDE drive setup will almost always beat a single SCSI drive. The real benifit of SCSI is it's reliability, uptime, both due to higher manufacturing specs, and it's scalability. Performance is only slightly better then modern IDE drives now, even then you almost need a 64bit PCI controller to see it. It's very hard to justify the enormous cost differences to use SCSI. A nice IDE Raid control (seperate from the MB so you can move your drives to another machine) and a few good 8MB buffered 7200rpm drives is a good price/performance ratio.

Dual CPU's don't make a difference unless you run some pretty intensive applications. The 2nd CPU doesn't kick in until the first is maxed out.... which I've only seen happen a couple times myself, usually during kernel compiles. Even then whatever you are running really needs to be optimized to take advantage of the 2nd CPU. Nowadays CPU's, AMD not Intel, are cheap though....

Im agreeing with what most people are saying here. Though im seriously out of the loop when it comes to Intel, my suggestions would be:

Aluminum Case - hey, its lighter, shiny, and a better heat dissipator.

A bunch of low rpm fans.

At least a 400 watt Power Supply. Enermex is usually good.

Intel 3.06 HT (Hyper-Threading). This is a coin flip between it and a Dual Chip system. Dual based, dont get used fully, as someone has already mentioned, unless the apps have SMP programmed in them, to take advantage of them. In such a case, the HT feature on this chip will help with the load, and save you SOME money compared to a dual based system.

Since your are going DDR, use a Dual Channel DDR based motherboard. Some information/reviews and manufacturers can be found here: http://www6.tomshardware.com/mainboard/02q4/021125/index.html

AT LEAST 512 DDR Corsair or Crucial ram. Im with the others on this, probably a 1 gig to be safe side. Though, arguably PC1066 Rambus would be faster. But its slightly, and not really worth it.

ATI Radeon 9700 Pro (Since the NV30 aka Geforce FX wont be available by then - if it was i'd go for that). Currently i dont believe a second video card is really neccary, as most Pro series has dual montior support in them, and in many cases wont help with the video load in the overall scheme of processing.

Im agreeing with the SCSI performance is negilble compared to a good IDE RAID controller and the WD 8mb Cache drives. If i was you, and not too woried about personal data, i would get a good IDE RAID controller, 64bit, with 4 40gig WD 8mb cache drives, using a RAID 0 stripe only. If you are concerned. You can always have 3 of those drives, and maybe a WD 120gig 8mb cache, running 000+1 stripe. Thats hardcore mind you. You will still notice considerable power with just 2 or 3 WD raid array instead. Serial ATA is on its move as someone has already metioned with ATA150 as a launching point. But it remains to be seen on how much "more" your going to get out of it, vs the IDE array.

If you really want to be nuts, you can get a RAM Drive. These things cost a bloody fortune, 700 U.S. i think with no memory in the card. Then just buy cheap big 4x 512 SDR ram. For a 2 gig at least. This will of course only benefit the app you run that from, and even then, is not possible to use a boot array (aka no using it for windows start up). But if i remember correclty will outperform a Cheetax15 SCSI raid by 4 times the speed i think. Use that for your video editing or 3d rendering stuff only. On games and stuff is practically wasted. It will just load levels faster.

hmm... Im tapped for idea's really. I think HarryB will probably come to the rescue with a list of top notch stuff, as always.

Ditto, I'm sorry, but if you're going to post tech advice try not to be completely full of shit. Modern 15k SCSI will soundly kick the ass of modern IDE both in seek times and sequential reads, not to mention expandability, bandwidth, etc... The ONLY advantages IDE has are the price and the fact that controllers are integrated into most motherboards. Figures from Storagereview.com

Transfer Rates (Drive Start)
Seagate Cheetah 15K.3 (73 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 76.4 MB/s
Western Digital Caviar WD2000BB (200 GB ATA-100) - 56.5 MB/s

Transfer Rates (Drive End)
Seagate Cheetah 15K.3 (73 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 51.1 MB/s
Western Digital Caviar WD2000BB (200 GB ATA-100) - 33.1 MB/s

Average Seek
Seagate Cheetah 15K.3 (73 GB Ultra320 SCSI) - 5.9 ms
Western Digital Caviar WD2000JB (200 GB ATA-100) - 14.8 ms

The SCSI drive is almost as fast at the end of the drive as the IDE (fastest currently available) is at the beginning. And of course, the usual anecdotal evidence. My X15-36LPs are faster than any of the IDE drives I've used. Get SCSI if you can afford it. I couldn't, but I got it anyway.

IDE RAID is entirely useless outside of video editing unless you plan on doing RAID 1. RAID 0 is asking for problems.

As for the dual CPU thing, sort of right but not quite. Seperate tasks or threads will be balanced evenly between CPUs, allowing you to do things like rip DVDs and play games at the same time with no slowdown in either application. Since we've got plenty of graphics people here, it wouldn't hurt to mention that it helps a lot in Max & Photoshop as well. If you're only seeing both CPUs being used during recompiles, either you're not running any multithreaded applications, not running more than one program at once, or something is configured wrong on that computer.

Tada.

"dream pc single cpu "

heh, ya lost me there. i wouldn't call a pc a dream pc without dual cpus, but as far as i know there aren't any non xeon dual p4 boards anyway.
here's what i'd suggest:

as for dual cpus: what are you talking about ditto ? one cpu doesn't hit it's maximum load and then the other one takes over, but the load is evenly distributed for the most part. dual cpus improve the overall preformance of windows, however don't get deluted and think you're going to get twice the the speed or double the efficiency (but it does improve it a lot). as said, things like max and photoshop use dual cpus most efficiently but still only between 60-80% from what i've heard. not to mention that you can set programs to use one or the other cpu.
i'd talk about your scsi theories too, but harry already covered that. i take it you don't run dual cpus or scsi ?

as for the pc, i'd agree with most people. basically just check out the parts online before you buy them, because even good names have horrid parts once in a while. i'd also suggest not getting top of the line, unless you want to see the price drop in half in six months and think (why the hell did i buy that for so much), especially with cpus and hds. usually stuff that's a tad older is a lot cheaper and for not that much less.

motherboard : msi, asus or abit - make sure they have good specs with decent upgrade options, usb2.0 support is one thing to look for
ram: 1-2 gigs
hd: seagate scsi or the wd drives with 8 mb of cache
soundcard: creative, if you don't mind dealing with the drivers. i've had tons of problems with creative myself, but they've got a pretty good monopoly.
video: geforce, since i'm still very afraid of ati and won't touch one for a couple of more years.
dvdrom - pioneer
cdrw - plextor, maybe yamaha