What to get, what to get?

[dr dex]

I am in the process of purchasing a new computer. I thought I had it all figured out until I spoke with some comp gurus I know. I'm no computer expert but I know enough to get me by. I built my last system and it held up just fine. Now I want a MACHINE...I'll probably run some mem-sucking math programs on it and definately Q3A and other games. I've already purchased a 21" monitor, SB Live! X-Gamer 5.1 and a Plextor 16x writer. I need to know what motherboard I should get for the 1.33 or 1.4GHz AMD I'll be getting. One of my friends is advising me to wait till next week and get Abit's KG7-RAID. I know a little about RAID tech, and if I get that board I was thinking of running two 20gig HDD's for Windows and programs and have an 80gig for mp3z, files, etc. Is this a good idea? I also want to run Linux in addition to windows. I really like Linux, it's just that I've gotten too acustom to win these past couple of years. As far as the video card goes, I've pretty much convinced myself to get the GF3 instead of the GF2 Pro. I think I'm gonna get 512MB of PC2100 DDR(w/ECC). AOpen's 16x DVD player looks good. Okay, so in a nutshell, here's what I need advice on:
1) Motherboard
2) Controller,(another one of my boys, is screaming for me to get SCSI U160...do I really need that fast of a transfer, or actually is it worth it?)
3) Hard drive...7200rpm for the RAID setup?
4) Memory..512MB DDR?
5) DVD player...AOpen's 16x?
6)Should I get a new brain, cause I've been frying mine trying to figure out what to get...
***Help me Obi-Wan, you're my only hope***

[UnseenMenace]

I personally think that the people who are telling you these things are advising you to get what hardware they would like.
For better advice may I suggest that you tell people what you require from a PC and your spending budget and see what advice that brings