Opinions? Everybody has one...
I like the AthlonXP 1700+. It's a great bang for the buck. I bought the OEM chip with an Alpha PAL-8045 heatsink. This giant heatsink is a bit tedious to install but it provides good cooling even when equipped with a low-rpm (QUIET) 80mm fan. If you're not going to overclock, then the AMD heatsink should be fine, particularly considering the good ventilation in the case that you've selected.
I also like the VIA KT266A chipset featured on the ASUS A7V266-E. ASUS has a reputation for quality and stability. I bought the SOYO board with the KT266A chipset because it was one of the first available in November. The C-Media 8738 sound included on the ASUS board is decent (much better than the nasty VIA PC97 audio on some motherboards). My second PC uses an ASUS motherboard (AMD 760 chipset). While the hardware itself is good and BIOS and driver updates appear on the ASUS website, I have been very disappointed by the lack of response from ASUS tech support. They don't answer e-mails, they don't answer questions in the newsgroups (though other ASUS customers can usually help) and they don't reply to questions posted on their message boards at the ASUS site. Given the profanity and anti-ASUS comments frequently posted there, I doubt that anyone from ASUS even reads those message boards on their own web-site. That's not very good customer relations, IMO. Your mileage may vary.
40GB 7200rpm IDE drives have been the sweet spot in $ per gigabyte until just recently. It looks like the 60GB drives are a better deal now. I had an IBM 75GXP that died after less than a year, but I haven't (knock wood) had any trouble yet with the newer 60GXP drives.
You'll want 256MB of RAM for WinXP or Win2K. While PC2100 was dirt cheap a couple of months ago, I bought 512MB. Photoshop is about the only software that I use that really needs that much (and more) memory.
I really like the Antec performance series cases. I've got an SX1030B (same as the SX830, except with a door over the drive bays). Antec power supplies have a good reputation.
I don't know much about the HP CD-RW drives except that they don't use BURN-proof, which is a really nifty feature on Plextor and even some of the affordable Lite-On drives. Based on an experience with a Phillips CD-RW without BURN-proof, you should follow the directions to put the CD-RW on the opposite IDE controller from the source drive (usually your C: hard-drive) and make certain that DMA is enabled.
What do you want to do with the graphics card? For gaming, the GeForce3 Ti200 cards provide a lot of performance for under $200. For video, the new ATI AIW 7500 makes your PC do a pretty good imitation of a TiVo unit. If 3D gaming isn't a priority, then almost any video card will do. If you must have the latest thing, then the new NVidia GeForce4 parts will be out next week. You might at least wait for them to appear for your consideration and to drive down the prices of the older stuff.
You didn't mention it, but I'll volunteer that the Microsoft Intellimouse Optical is a good mouse. It has 5 buttons (the last two are useful for going back a page and forward a page when web-browsing). It's smaller than the more expensive Intellimouse Explorer (therefore more comfortable, IMO), and it can be used comfortably with either hand. The optical pickup doesn't get dirty (there are no rollers to clean), and the USB interface is handy.
Just remember that free advice is frequently worth what you pay for it.
