Wow, I'm glad I asked. I might not be able to sort through all of your advice until the weekend, but I wanted to thank everyone who responded. Thanks!

Hello, SPCR. I've been lurking for a while, so I'm glad to finally say hi. I am thinking of building a desktop for home use along the following lines, and would love any advice. I want to run Ubuntu and Windows 7 simultaneously (with a VM). The Ubuntu side is for playing music (with MPD), backing up...