Been a long time since upgrade.....Need a home office workhorse

Well it has been awhile, and with all this new PC equipment I don't know where to start. I've always been a "bang-for-buck" type of guy, always buying last generation hardware at cheap prices, this might be the first build I would want the latest and greatest. I am looking to bring work home with me on a portable hard drive, getting sick of dragging my laptop to and fro.

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Running mostly productivity suites
- MS Office 2010 (Multiple instances of excel/word open at any time. Heavy macro use)
- SQL Server 2008 Express
- Interwebz/email
- Virtual PC
- VMware (Mostly this, 1 - 2 instances open at any time)

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
- $1000 including shipping and taxes (will order online so I'll avoid taxes)

3) Where do you live?
- WI

4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
- CPU
- Mobo
- RAM (8 gig min)
- Hard drive(s) Looking for performance here, so SSD (Operating System) and SATAIII (data storage) drives, one of each.
- Video card (will NOT be doing any gaming, could do photo/video editing as a hobby at some point)

5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
- Power Supply (CZ ModXStream Pro OCZ700MXSP 700W - only a few months old)
- Case (Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case)
- Hard Drives (2 - Western Digital Caviar Blue WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb) These may move into external enclosures.
- DVD Burner

6) Will you be overclocking?
- Nope

7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
- 20" Samsung 205BW, will upgrade in summer.

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
- 1 to 2 months

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? etc.
- USB 3.0
- SATA 6Gb/s

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
- Nope, want Windows Pro 64bit (Virtual PC)

Thanks for the suggestions, I have thought about going to the 27" iMac I keep playing with at Best Buy....it's so purdy.

Can you narrow down when exactly you're gonna build the PC?

Well right now I am trying close close on a house, was suppose to be this week, hopefully next at the latest but I won't build this until that is sorted out. So I guess I can't give a better timeline. Are there hardware updates on the horizon? It so I am not opposed to holding off...

Well there will probably be newer and faster SSDs coming out within that 1 to 2 month time frame. However here's the deal: a good majority of our build lists involve some sort of Newegg combo deal to save money and/or get a faster part for the same price as a slower part. However those usually end at the end of every month. In addition, a lot can change within 1-2 months. Parts can be overpriced, out of stock, outperformed, or outdated in that time period.

As such, a build list recommended today may not be the best list to buy next month let alone two month from now.

So, please come back about 2-3 weeks before whatever time period you've narrowed down your purchase date to. You'll get the most up-to-date advice on hardware as well as the best deals/prices for those hardware.

If you are looking at a high end but not insane system at the moment you probablly want an intel sandy bridge chip.

Do you plan to do any gaming on the machine at all?
How many monitors do you plan to have after you upgrade? If the answer is 2 are you happy with one of those monitors on an analog connection or do you want both on digital?
Do you plan to keep the rig for a long time and therefore think you will need expansion slots to add the next big thing? if so carefull attention is needed to the PCIe configuration. The large ammount of non-chipset hardware on current boards can leave something of a PCIe lane shortage.
When answering no to will you be overclocking do you mean you won't be overclocking immediately or that you never plan to overclock? with sandy bridge only k suffix parts are significantly overclockable and you need a P67 board for overclocking.