Squiddley - I would tend to disagree with one of your final points - "Bear in mind whatever you go for will be outdated in a few months, so don't go for the very latest stuff, as it will cost you." Go for the spangliest system that you can. As you rightly pointed out, kit gets outdated after a few months, so if you buy less than up-to-date kit, your system will become incapable of playing the latest games that much sooner.
JP Justice - NOOOOO! Don't be tempted to go the laptop route unless you are on the move a lot. Laptops require almost bespoke components, as they are required to be very small (to fit in the case) and very power efficient (so the battery life isn't compromised). These 2 requirements mean that items of kit for laptops are around twice the price as those for normal PCs. Of course, if you get external peripherals, you will have loads of transformers kicking around under your desk and a rat's nest of wiring on top of it.
Finally, and to answer Butt's original question - see these threads:
http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/For...ML/000502.html (about 2/3 the way down the page)
and:
http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/For...ML/000546.html
Things have moved on a bit in the last few months, faster processors, motherboards, HDDs, etc, but the message is the same
[This message has been edited by R O Tiree (edited 31 January 2001).]