During Christmas I put together my first PC that didn't have a brand label slapped on the tower. I had always been interested in PC gaming but only recently got enough money to put together a half-decent rig. After budgeting and much research I came up with this:

EVGA Nvidia 750i FTW Motherboard
2x EVGA Nvidia 9800GT superclocked edition cards in SLI
Wolfdale E8500 dual core processor
4 gigs of Corsair 1066 DDR2 RAM
PC Power&Cooling 750w Silencer PSU
WD Cavier 640 gig HDD
Windows Vista Home Premium (Please don't shoot me, I regret it enough already lol)

I know this isn't exactly top of the line or anything, but it's what I could afford haha.

I have a couple of questions, and would love any comments on the setup that you might have, or random suggestions. First, if I'm going to be mainly playing games like Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, and Guild Wars 2, with maybe some other odd games here and there -- how long is this PC going to last me? Should I do a minor upgrade toward the end of the year to give it a tad more longevity? Second, do you have any suggestions for how I can get the most out of my machine without doing a complete overhaul? Lastly, any general advice would be much appreciated, just be gentle :P

Two things from my amateurish viewpoint:

• Have you thought about going with a single, more powerful video card instead of two cards in SLI?  I heard that's a better value.
• Have you considered getting two hard drives, one large one for storage and another faster, smaller capacity drive for running your games off of?  Something like a WD Velociraptor.

Not to sure about the EVGA Nvidia 9800GT superclocked edition cards in SLI, I have a Nvidia 8800 GTX oc which I've found to run all PC games I own perfecty. Been a good year and a half since I built my PC so pricing might have changed, trouble with SLI is that it can be a powerhog. Also keep in mind that PC gaming is kind of stuck at the moment, Crysis is still the top benchmark (gamewise) and you don't need the latest and greatest graphics cards to play them. 

I'm getting sick of folks critising Windows though, if your not a mac user your no one it seems in this day and age. Vista is a very solid system that runs games perfectly from my experience. Though I recommend you try and get the Windows 7 beta, if it's still running that is. Much better OS and it is running well for me. 

I'm no expert but I'll give a few quick thoughts.
I would be more inclined to go with a single GTX260 rather than two 9800gts. It may even work out cheaper and I think it will serve you well as far as longevity is concerned as you can always stick another one in for SLi later on. Keep in mind you'll need a big case for the length of the graphics card.
Processor should be fine as you can always upgrade to a quad at a later date, and 750W should be plenty of power for that setup (although again, I am no expert!)
Also if you are planning to go with 4gigs of ram, make sure you get Vista 64 bit.

Extra note: I have a Intel Quad E6600 running in my system. Believe it's the cheapest Quad but it's great value for money. 

I would also recommend going for a higher end card instead of SLi.  Just as a general rule, don't pay for the highest end hardware, you'll just be wasting money.MB said:

• Have you considered getting two hard drives, one large one for storage and another faster, smaller capacity drive for running your games off of?  Something like a WD Velociraptor.

Thanks for the suggestions so far guys! I considered 2 HDDs but decided to simply partition the one I have; however, I may buy another HDD down the road when needed.

Also, I thought about the 260, but at the time of purchasing these parts it was considerably more expensive than the 2 9800's which is what ultimately fueled that decision. I would have loved to go single solution but I got pwned by my wallet there hahaha.

"I would also recommend going for a higher end card instead of SLi.  Just as a general rule, don't pay for the highest end hardware, you'll just be wasting money.MB said:

• Have you considered getting two hard drives, one large one for storage and another faster, smaller capacity drive for running your games off of?  Something like a WD Velociraptor.

That seems kind of backwards, as games will take up a LOT more space than an OS.  When I was more into PC gaming, games took up far more HDD space than anything else.  The latest trend is to get a solid state drive for your OS and just use a HDD for games / everything else.  Obviously higher speed is better for games, but these days especially it's easy to take up more than 250GB on games alone.If you're building your first PC I recommend a large case so it's easy to work in."

• Have you considered getting two hard drives, one large one for storage and another faster, smaller capacity drive for running your games off of?  Something like a WD Velociraptor.

"

Yeah I agree with most everyone about the multiple cards... I went through a nightmare with Multi-GPU setups and in the end, I got myself
a single GTX260 and im loving it. So yeah consider just one good card in the future but i mean, if you're having good luck with SLi just keep on it I guess. 

I would recommend a 260 Core 212 over that 9800 GT SLI setup.  Then save up a few hundred bucks in a few months and buy another 260 and SLI that.

I would recommend the Corsair 850watt version cause its not much more http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139009 future proof yourself more when you SLI.

Not to ruin anyone's love of Nvidia, but you know the ATI Hd4970 aren't bad cards and will run everything just as well for usually a cheaper price. I'm just saying, you should look into that was well, there is a large slant against ATI, but the cards are actually fairly decent. In fact when comparing my rig withmy friend's alienware which has an nvdiai 9800GTX +, my ATI Hd4870 out performs it in almost every game.

Edit: i mean HD4870, sorry i posted after reading about the HD4890 and got a bit ahead of myself and slurred the two together...

"Not to ruin anyone's love of Nvidia, but you know the ATI Hd4970 aren't bad cards and will run everything just as well for usually a cheaper price. I'm just saying, you should look into that was well, there is a large slant against ATI, but the cards are actually fairly decent. In fact when comparing my rig withmy friend's alienware which has an nvdiai 9800GTX +, my ATI Hd4870 out performs it in almost every game."

• The single graphics card is a valid one, but he already has the two and selling them off to get a single one will probably end up costing him more at this point.
• The Multi Hard Drive suggestion is okay, but the difference it would make is so minimal that you would not even notice any change. I wouldn't even suggest getting SSD HD..
  Those are current unrealiable " they don't last that well " and cost a fortune, only thing SSD are good for is saving power on a laptop or if you really need a computer that has to boot up in less than 10 secs " there are otherways to achive this but thats another point altogether "