I just built my new PC last month. Aside from fast hard drives and dual monitor videocard I would suggest you to get this silent case:
http://www.antec-inc.com/pro_details_enclosure.php?ProdID=15138

It really, really makes a difference. No if I go into the room I have to look at the computer lights to see if it's still on. My old computer with standard case and one extra fan sounds like a vacuum cleaner now :), compared to the Antec Sonata case. It also has very convenient removable drive bays.

The details of the PC I built:

Motherboard Abit NF-7S, AMD Athlon 2800+, 1 GB RAM, nVidia Ti4200 dual display videocard (from my previous PC), two Western Digital hard drives, 80 GB and 160 GB, DVD-Rewriter LG GSA-4081B.

>Does anyone have any recommendations to make on building your own computer? I came across an article at:
>
>http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1549122,00.asp
>
>on how to build your own gaming machine for under $1,000. What I would like to do is build my own machine, but I'll be using it to develop with Windows XP Professional, Visual Studio.NET, and SQL Server 2000. I am assuming that in a development machine, hard drive performance is more important than graphics performance, but is that true?