Linux i7 Rig for quiet stability and maybe a little Quake Live

Question

I am considering building a PC for the first time in about 10 years. I would really appreciate a review of the components I have chosen. I hope to run mainly ArchLinux, where I'll be doing browser development (WebKit builds) and Debian Live builds. Though from time to time, I would like to frag in Quake Live. :)

Component list (Budget ~800GBP)

Case

I've been told I need at least 500W. I wonder can I get a PSU with a display that shows how much power my rig is sucking down?

• Antex 300 ~45GBP (needs a PSU)

or

• Antec NSK 6580B ~80GBP

Hard drive

• 160GBP 10000RPM VelociRaptor - 111GBP

or

• 80GB Intel SSD ~200GBP

i7

Does this box come with a stock cooler?

• Intel's Nehalem 920 CPU ~200GBP

Mainboard

Intel is most likely to be stable and have good BIOS upgrades that work in Linux. Right?

• Intel DX58SO ~188GBP

Video card

I need (at least) two DVI outputs for two monitors with Xinerama

• GeForce GTS 250 Dual DVI ~130GBP

or

• GeForce 9600GT Dual DVI ~60GBP

RAM

• 4G of DDR3 RAM ~65GBP

Answer 1

I think you are going a little overkill here. For quake live you won't need more than an 7800 series nvidia card, and I know my 9600GT happily runs dual monitors (with compiz) and any modern games. Hell I had a Windows 7 partition for a while and the 9600 ran the Crysis demo with ~high settings at 1680x1050 at >20fps. I say step down a notch or two on the video card, you aren't really going to need the extra power and you can put that money into a second, larger hard drive for storing all your files that don't require the R/W speeds of a 10k rpm or solid state drive (music, movies, etc).