one guy i work with just dropped about 1k down on a 64 machine....not to sure on all the specs but i know he has 2 gig's of ram, (if i remember correctly) he said he has 2 80 gig sata drives (may have been from his old system or another convo from work) but i know he went with the sata drives...he just got it put together last night and the first install was working fine but something got hosed and he couldnt use his browser so he had to reinstall all over again but...the 10-15 mins he was able to play with it, it ran great....if you want/need more details about what he did buy i can find out the complete details for ya.
anyway....i have also heard bad things about the maxtor drives, i always buy WD hard drives and Crucial memory...i havent checked out the abit boards for 64 but my next upgrade will be an Abit AN7...everything i would need in a motherboard for a good price, along with Crucial memory....also they have
high performance ram at a half decent price imo