As always, our Double-Stuff system includes some of the fastest components available, often paired up in an ode to parallelism, without squandering cash on unnecessary extras.

Processor
In light of Intel's price cuts and the ensuing findings from our recent CPU value comparison, we've switched our recommendation from the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 to the Core 2 Quad Q6600. The price difference between the two chips is around $500, but all the Core 2 Extreme really gets you is an extra 166MHz. The Q6600 also has a 105W power rating, so it runs cooler than the 130W QX6700, too.

As in our previous guides, we're avoiding AMD's Quad FX platform. Not only do Quad FX processors offer slower overall performance at higher prices than Intel's Core 2 Quad Q6600, AMD's solution also presents two further disadvantages. First, Quad FX has formidable power consumption. The extra power draw requires both a beefier power supply and increased cooling, which won't be kind to either your ears or your power bill. Another problem with Quad FX is pricing: its lone motherboard at present, the Asus L1N64-SLI WS, costs around $330 on Newegg. We don't think dealing with higher prices, more power consumption, and higher noise output to end up with lower overall performance makes any sense, so we still see no reason to recommend Quad FX.

Motherboard
We went with an nForce 680i SLI motherboard and a pair of GeForce 8800 GTX graphics cards for this system last time, but we've chosen an Intel motherboard and AMD graphics cards this time. Our reasons for that are straightforward: we want to cut costs a little, and in Windows Vista, AMD's Radeon HD 2900 XT performs better overall in multi-GPU configurations than Nvidia's GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB.

We'll get into all that in more detail in a minute, but in the meantime, let's have a look at our recommended motherboard: Gigabyte's GA-P35-DQ6. This is a top-of-the-line offering based on Intel's P35 chipset. It sports dual PCI Express x16 slots (in a x4/x16 lane setup) with CrossFire support, eight 300MB/s Serial ATA ports, an elaborate heat pipe-based chipset/voltage circuitry cooler, and overclocking features aplenty. The GA-P35-DQ6 earned one of our editor's choice awards in our P35 comparative review, so it's a fine match for this system. The x4/x16 lane configuration may hurt the performance of our dual Radeon HD 2900 XTs slightly, but from what we've seen, the performance penalty isn't too harsh.

Memory
Our pick here is a 4GB kit of OCZ Gold DDR2-800 memory. At $235.99, it's almost a steal considering the DIMMS are rated for operation at 800MHz with 5-5-5-18 timings. The high-density modules should also give you room to upgrade to 8GB of memory somewhere down the line.

Do bear in mind, however, that getting applications to use 4GB or 8GB of memory with a 32-bit version of Windows Vista (or Windows XP) will be tricky. The way recent 32-bit Windows operating systems handle that amount of memory is a little peculiar. Suffice it to say that you'll want to install a 64-bit version of Vista to take full advantage of our memory recommendation. See our operating system selection page for details.

Graphics
The performance advantage enjoyed by dual Radeon HD 2900 XTs over dual GeForce 8800 GTS 640MBs can be chalked up in part to Nvidia's less mature multi-GPU drivers for Vista. Those drivers sometimes even hold back a dual GeForce 8800 GTX config from besting a pair of Radeon HD 2900 XTs in CrossFire. We assume this discrepancy will eventually be resolved through driver updates, but in the meantime, AMD seems to be the better choice in the high-end multi-GPU arena. For that reason, we've selected a pair of Radeon HD 2900 XT cards from Sapphire that run at stock speeds and are available for around $395. These will run hotter and draw more power than equivalent Nvidia offerings, but our recommended case/PSU combo can handle it.

As always, you'll want a large display with support for very high resolutions if you want to come anywhere close to using these cards to their full potential in today's games. We cover displays more thoroughly in our accessories section, but Dell's 30" UltraSharp 3007WFP-HC is a pretty good bet in this case. Dual Radeon HD 2900 XTs can run nearly any game at the monitor's native resolution of 2560x1600 without breaking a sweat, and it simply looks gorgeous.

Storage
We've bumped our storage recommendation to a whopping 1.65TB of storage split between two 7,200RPM Western Digital Caviar SE16s and two 10,000RPM Western Digital Raptors. These drives can be run in either RAID 0 or RAID 1 arrays (or a combination of the two) for improved storage speed or redundancy. RAID 0 may increase the chance of data loss without doing much for overall system performance, but it should still help in particularly storage-intensive tasks. If you'd like to improve both performance and redundancy, you can also assign four of either drive to a RAID 0+1 array.

On the optical drive front, the Samsung SH-S183L has made it all this way from our Econobox to the fastest machine in our system guide. This drive is perfectly capable, though, and the fact that it uses Serial ATA connectivity makes it a good addition to a state-of-the-art box.

Audio
The Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer sound card is also back from the Grand Experiment and Sweet Spot builds. Creative makes pricier versions of the card with built-in "X-RAM," but as we saw in our review of the X-Fi Fatal1ty, the added memory does little for performance in the few games that support it. Creative also offers even fancier versions of the X-Fi with support for break-out boxes, but we think users who really need a gazillion audio inputs and outputs would rather look at true professional offerings from M-Audio or E-MU. Otherwise, feel free to have a look at the X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Professional or the X-Fi Elite.

Enclosure and power supply
Choosing an enclosure and power supply combo seems odd considering our budget, but the Antec P190 isn't your run-of-the-mill case bundle. It comes with two Neo Power power supplies that have power ratings of 650W and 550W, adding up to a combined 1.2kW of power delivery. You also get two 140mm top fans, one side 200mm fan, one 120mm exhaust fan, and yet another 120mm fan for the lower chamber. The case can accommodate an Extended ATX motherboard, six hard drives, and four 5.25" optical drives. For $449.99, it's really not that expensive considering the cost of comparable power supplies and cases.