The gist of this is that I'm looking to replace my 4+ year old rig with a new one that's a little more optimized for running some Windows Server VMs than my current is. I've been upgrading piece by piece, here's what I'm running right now:
Intel E8400 (Core 2 Duo 3.0GHz)
6GB of RAM (couldn't make 8GB stable)
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L
Mushkin Chronos 120GB SSD (boot drive)
Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB, WD10EACS-00D6B0 (data)
MSI Radeon 7770 1GB
Antec P280
Antec NEO ECO 620W (overkill, but I got it on sale)
What's left is to upgrade the CPU, MB, RAM, and storage.
Virtualization is what's really been pushing my system lately, and it doesn't always hold up too well. Self-study MS exam VM usage, Microsoft test lab guides, and ESXi/vCenter testing. I'm currently usually not CPU bound, I do hit memory limits if I fire up too many, and things definitely slow to a crawl when two or more VMs are hitting the disk.
I plan on getting an i5, probably the 3450 since I'm valuing stability over anything else. I'll go for 16GB of RAM too (probably an 8x2 kit). What I'm most looking for advice on is what I should do for storage. I don't want anything too exotic (trying to be conservative) but I'd like a decent upgrade from what I'm on right now. I'd like to go up to 2TB of storage as well. Does a new WD Black, Blue or Green sound like the way to go, or should I consider doing a RAID 0/1 of RE4s, or the newly released Reds? My current storage drive will probably become a backup drive (1TB will probably be fine for some time). I generally go WD, but not particularly averse to anything (the only drive I ever had a problem was a 15GB Maxtor). I also value quiet a fair bit.
I'm going to be hitting up a Micro Center in the near future, so CPU will definitely come from there, possibly other stuff too. CPU/MB/RAM suggestions are appreciated too, though the storage is my real quandry.
Thank you for any thoughtful suggestions!