KG's 11 dimensional retrospection

My current PC is now more than four years old and it is very slow compared to modern PC (let's say, my work PC w/ dual core CPU).
The CPU is Athlon XP 2600+ with 2GB memory. In general, Windows XP runs fine for something like emailing and browsing, but for my primary usages of Visual Studio 2008 and Silkypix Development Studio (Raw development software) it is extremely slow, and it hurts my productivity.
Also my main display is ViewSonic's G90fb 19inch CRT display -yes CRT. It is a great CRT display, but is now showing some noise.

So, I decided to build a new PC and to replace the display with modern LCD one, to keep up with the latest PC technology so that I can gain my high productivity again.

My goal is that the new PC should last at least next three years and should meet my two most important usages:

1. Software development, including multi-threading programming and latest computer graphics.
2. Photo editing (Raw development and Photoshop)

I'm going to post the process of my building PC for the next couple of entries :)