The beast is alive and she hungers for your soul!
As a test and because I didn't want to be sucked into a new game at 4am, I loaded up Crysis which my laptop could play at maybe 10-15fps on minimum detail at 1024x768. I cranked it up to maximum detail at a resolution of 1920x1080 and ran it with 4x antialiasing and it ran like a dream. I chucked it up to 16xQ antialiasing and it made no difference at all to the performance. It also made almost no difference to the visuals so I doubt I'll run many games with the AA that high, its just not worth the extra power consumption.
Now I have to decide what to try next, Metro 2033 which is the newest I have, DoW2 which I always wanted to run better or Empire Total War which was the first game that I knew I just couldn't buy for my previous gaming system because 1fps strategy isn't as fun as it sounds. Or maybe load up DOSBox and play Red Storm Rising...
According to 3dmark, my ePeen is P21753 3DMarks which is 1/3 of the best system they have records of and that bastard has 4 bloody GTX480s and a cpu that cost 4 times what mine did.
As you can see in the pics, my cable routing could have done with more work but I have giant hands with thick cables in a relatively tight case (had to remove the rear case fan to have room to plug in the secondary mobo power).
It still bugs me that my speakers are white, they stick out like a sore thumb and I can't avoid thinking about it now that I've noticed it. Still for 11 year old equipment they work brilliantly well.
Overall, I'm impressed with the new system and I'm sure that your envy will sustain me for quite a while. Mwahahaha

God, that ... Black thing is a graphics card or an integrated oven!?

Yes
It was hell to install, took 3 goes before I managed to get both the card and the cables in correctly

Maybe a SHC (Small Hadron Colider)

congrats, it's an awesome system. I am saving for a new one myself, but will wait untill crysis 2 or rage comes out... I just don't want to buy a new pc, buy rage 4 months later and find out my "beast" is struggling. On an other note i am shocked that my 3 year old pc can still run metro 2033 on high without breaking a sweat.

that mobo looks very similar to mine, don't recall if its the exact same model though. WTF kind of CPU cooler do you have on that thing? It's like a tesla coil...

Well I'd imagine that any DX11 card would do you for a few years, at least I sure as hell HOPE it will!
I have to say I'm rather enjoying metro 2033 myself, spent a few hours playing it tonight and its a good cross between stalker & fallout. Its not perfect but its definitely a diamond in the rough
The voice acting is a bit cheap but in a way I think that adds realism, they don't sound like actors

it also feels a lot like cryostasis, must be the atmosphere...

Its a giant zalman, the cnps 9900a to be exact. Heavy bastard but it seems to be keeping the cpu cool

Impressive feat, fitting that GPU into that case. Not much you can do with the cabling, by the looks of it.

I envy you.

Well... Yeah...
I build a new box every 18 months (when that is an option financially, and it sometimes is) and I target that box to be something like the second best available technology. I have found that I always have a machine more than capable of handling the latest games at very playable levels.
I just built a new box last month to replace my two year old box... and not only is it screaming, but actually the old box does a respectable job even still.
Based on what I have learned about Rage (which looks AWESOME!) and Crysis 2, I think that if you build an i5 or i7 box with an ATI 58xx or nVidia 4x0 anytime in the next 6 months, you'll be set for those games and more.
Now I really looked hard at the 480, which I wanted... but I bought the 5870 for these reasons...
1. It's cheaper.
2. It performs almost as well as a 480, despite being weak on tesselization (or however that is spelled)
3. ATI cards can be crossfired to any card or any brand with the family, so in 12 months, if I need to, I can pick up another 58xx (a lot cheaper than today) and achieve a big upgrade... but the 480 will be harder to match up in that time. (or so I believe will be true)
And it used to be that software pushed hardware... but in the past couple of years, software has started to trail hardware, which lets us gamers focus more money on our games and less on our gear.

With my system I was at the point where every bit of tech in my old machine was out of date and needed replacing so I could literally only recycle a hard drive, a mouse and speakers. I could have recycled a keyboard as well but it was a flimsy piece of crap that had more flex than a bodybuilding contest.
Since I can't afford to upgrade anywhere near as frequently as every 18 months (unless I start saving for the upgrade right after getting the last one), I decided to go for top of the line tech just so it might last me the extra few months till I can afford a new video card since that'll be the only part that needs replacing in the next few years. No chance of my doing SLI though, the raw power of the card has never been the problem in obsolescence, its always chipset features, adding a second card will just let it suck twice as fast

That's where he gets his energy!