well, all I can add to that post is my recommendation:

Don't try to build up a really beefy computer that'll last you for several years. It's much better to just get a near top-of-the-line computer and upgrade it over time. It's a lot cooler that way.

I don't play videogames anymore, or do much of anything that takes excessive CPU juice of a beasty video card.

I'm on an AMD Athlon XP 2400+ that's clocked at 1.84GHz for stability. I had some overheating problem with the system over the summer, plus the hard drive gets hot, makes the click of death and nearly crashes on occasion. there doesn't seem to be any decent software to copy your hard drive's boot sector properly, so the warranty was ineffective.