Case: COOLER MASTER Centurion 5
Motherboard: ASUS P5Q Pro (LGA 775)
PSU: Rosewill RP550V2-D-SL 550W
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 with a ARTIC Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Fan
Memory: 2x 4GB Kit DDR2 1066
Graphics: SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 3870 512MB
Hard Drive: 2x Western Digital Caviar 500GB HD (RAID0 configuration for a 1TB disk array)
Optical Drives: 2 Samsung 22x DVD+R
OS: Windows Vista Home Premium
Misc: USB Card Reader, KWORLD TV Card, Bluetooth Dongle

As an ongoing project, our PC Spec drawup of Feb 2009 we've come up with this affordable Quad Core solution. We threw in a TV Tuner card to take advantage of Vista Home Premium's capability with them (also there is decent Linux support for it as well).

This system has higher specs than my current one which was purchased in December 08 which flies. The total on this should run approximately $1,065.85 plus s&h.