im going to build a cpu for multimedia for my sister and i want to give her the best specs i can so here's my idea
 
IntelQ6600  
 
Motherboard: MSI P35neo-F  
 
 
Vid Card: Inno 3D 8800GT 512Mb 256bit  
 
HD: seagate Barracuda 500G  
 
memory: Kingston 2gig
 
Enermax 535 fan EG565P-VE  
 
  im wondering if msi is really a great board they say asus is also good but what is the best for multimedia.. she will use illustrator,photoshop,maya etc..
 
and also i dont have any idea on power cooling.. anything you can add or replace in my specs?  
 
thanks
 

Enermax is at worst case scenario a tier 3 psu so you most likely are in good shape with that choice.  I like Corsair and you can usually get a good deal on one of thier models.
 
What OS are you going to install?  If your installing Vista 64 bit or even XP 64 I would recommend to go ahead and get 4 gigs of ram if you can swing it.
 
You would also do well with an 8800 GTS 512mb card.
 
I prefer ASUS or Gigabyte motherboards.  They have been more stable and dependable for me than any other brands so far...

im going to use a xp how about coooling system is it alright if i dont use any of it? how can i push my cpu to its fullest?

I second Asus and Gigabyte and definately go for 4gig of RAM if using photoshop whether 64bit or 32bit, more if you can get it (and are using a 64bit OS)

 
Eeerrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
 
 You push your CPU to its "fullest" by using a good cooling system for one. But not using one.. I.. what do..
 
I just don't know wtf you're saying right there.

seboj, to clarify:

I'm going to use xp. How about a cooling system? Is it alright if I don't use any of it? How can I push my CPU to its fullest?

@OP

You WILL use a cooling system, it's just a question of which. We'll assume you're sticking with air. Stock HSFs are OK for basic use (heck mine took my Pentium D to 3.8) However a better cooling system, be it air, water, phase change, N2O(!); will allow further overclocking and quiter operation.

An e8200 would be 10% faster in PS than the q6600.
 
An e8400 would be 25% faster.
 
(SSE4 and faster FSB - PS & Ill no advantage with 4 cores)
 
More RAM and multiple HDDs is the way to go - beef up your disk I/O.  
 
8800gt is really of no benefit, either - and a 8800gts even more so ...

 
Forgive me for saying, but Photoshop is optimised for multiple cores and will run faster on a quad than a slightly faster dual.

 
No.
 
There are a few filters in PS that will run parallel threads.  PS is not "optimized for multiple cores" (whatever that means).
 
Even an e6850 will whomp a q6600 by 25%.

 
Muiltithreaded.

Actually, PS has been designed for multi-threading for years.  
 
OP, if she's going to be doing picture editing, rendering, flash, animation, HD movie watching, etc, then yes - quad core is really the way you should go.
 
You should ask her how much space she needs, 500gb seems a little low. My fiancee is a professional photographer who shoots in RAW, so I'm having to purchase 1 tb of space for my upcoming build. You can always go RAID 0 to speed up your input/output, but her work sounds important, so you might not want to risk the data loss. RAID 0+1 just plain gets expensive with higher storage amounts.
 
Kingston is reliable ram - you might want to consider doubling up to 4gb.

Photoshop CS 3
Filtering from a 69 MB TIF-Photo  
 
C2D e8200 = 112 sec
 
C2D e8400 = 100 sec
 
C2D e8500 = 94 sec
 
C2D e6850 = 99 sec
 
C2Q q6600 = 122 sec
 
 
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts [...] ,384.html?

about the raid our professor taught us about it but i dont know how to put it.. i have a background about d raids and what they do but putting it in a pc i have no idea -_-!
 
hmmm ill make my ram 4 gig ^_^