Well, at this point, I am REALLY leaning towards a motherboard running an X38 chipset, with DDR3, and PCI Express 2.0.... This is going to be most of the budget, but I am ok with that... I would rather get a nice motherboard now that I can drop a Penryn into, than get a rounded system now, and have to look to upgrade again in the short-term......
It would be so much easier to do this if customer's would stop calling me and interrupting my research.... lol.