I use an AMD 2600+ with 1gb of PC2700 DDR RAM, on a MSI KT4 Ultra motherboard. For graphics I have a ATI Radeon 9700 128mb and an audigy sound card for those mp3:s. It works really good. Since I, like you, am a gamer I like how the 9700 handles games and maya both. I would recommend something along the lines of a Intel 2.4ghz (800mhz bus, highly overclockable) with an i865PE motherboard and some 1gb+ of pc3200 ram, for graphics its hard, but I like the 9700.