Also, I posted my latest Intel-based plan at the PCMechanic Tech Forum yesterday and the suggestions I've gotten so far include:

1.  "think twice about X64 - driver support is just bad."

2.  Get retail rather than OEM version of burner to get software.

3.  Look at the LiteOn and LG DVD burners too (echoing Jim Burton on LiteOn)

4.  Don't bother with RAID 1 since it only helps deal with physical drive failure, and don't help with malware or file corruption which would appear on both drives.

5.  Look into ATI FireGL or Nvidia Quadro workstation video cards if running intensive 3D applications.

On the last point, I'm guessing the commenter was thinking about something other than Poser since many folks have said a whiz bang vid card doesn't help Poser except perhaps in Preview animations, so I'm not figuring to change the vid card.

On RAID, I guess I could just go with RAID 0 and look for a possible speed boost instead of backup protection.

On Win XP x64, I was under the impression the 64-bit version of XP was reasonably well-supported and that it would help with Poser, especially for multi-thread rendering.  Am I wrong about that?  Should I be looking at regular old Win XP?  Or the Media Center edition I've seen used for gaming rigs by some assmbly houses?

Thanks anticipatorily for any additional advice folks could give, especially since I'm about to pull out the credit card!  (I want to get the parts in the house before my son's Spring Break so I'll need to order soon!)

cheers...