BT, my "current" oldie cpu cost me about £700 to upgrade last year.

Seems to me that dell is a bit over the top!, if you got the money go right ahead! but your better just getting a cheaper AMD or intel DUO core.

The next Quads will be great but jsut think about the electricty bill. If you have it running 24/7 you wont be smiling any more.

"PROCESSOR    Intel® Core® 2 Duo® E6600 Processor (2.4GHz, 1066MHz, 4MB)   

MEMORY    2048MB Dual Channel DDR2 533MHz [2x1024] Memory   

HARD DRIVE    500GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst™ cache  

OPTICAL DRIVE(S)    16x DVD+/-RW & 16x DVD Drives    

GRAPHICS CARD    256MB nVidia™ GeForce™ 7900GS graphics card"

Something like the above would be more than enough, about £1200 from dell. Add a couple of cheap external drives and your off.

As for the quad it be a different socket for them (dont ask!) so everything will be more expensive.

Alex,