Thanks muchly Jazz, I'll take note of everything ^^
I buy AMD chips and nothing else - my current PC has an Athlon XP and I love it to bits. I had to travel 60 miles to get to a computer store that sold laptops with AMD chips - literally every shop in my home city had Intel and nothing else (and I swore never to buy from a few places after they said "What kind of Pentium is that?" Morons...)
I got a 250GB hard drive at the moment. I may have to buy another if my fiancee doesn't stop downloading cartoons.
My favourite video cards have always been NVidia GeForce - I usually look for the newest one and then buy the one a step or two steps down from that.
When I buy cases I go for SIZE... ease of access and all that. (Size does matter!)
Now, I've heard some good stuff about Alienware computers - and yes, I have drooled over them, because a local internet cafe has a bunch and they look like the ultimate gaming machines on the planet... I'm wondering if it's possible to build a computer with the same specs and fine tuning of an Alienware? I don't have a few grand to throw away on one, otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion - but I'm wondering if I can make myself something close to one without going completely broke.