I chose these items from NCIX's Back to School sale:
http://www.ncix.com/promo/promosale....ack2school2007

My custom PC:

CPU - Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Quad Core Processor LGA775 Kentsfield 2.40GHZ 1066FSB 8MB Retail Box - $289.99
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...1&promoid=1065

Motherboard - EVGA Nforce 680I SLI LGA775 Conroe ATX DDR2 2PCI-E16 2PCI SATA2 RAID Sound GBLAN 1394 Motherboard - $199.99
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...A&promoid=1065

RAM - Patriot Extreme Performance 4GB 2X2GB PC2-6400 DDR2-800 CL5-5-5-12 EPP Dual Channel Memory Kit - $259.99
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...t&promoid=1065

EVGA E-GEFORCE 8800GTX 575MHZ 768MB 1.8GHZ GDDR3 Dual DVI-I HDTV Out HDCP DIRECTX10 Video Card - $559.99
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...A&promoid=1065

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB ATA100 7200RPM 16MB Cache NCQ Hard Drive - $119.99
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...e&promoid=1065

My Total: 1469.95

You can get some pretty serious hardware with $1500!