Planning on buying a Mac Pro

Hi, I'm planning on buying a Mac Pro 3Ghz in the near future and had a few questions before I buy it.
I plan on using the computer mainly for games but I want to have it for a long time and be able to handle whatever I throw at it (games and otherwise). I had a iMac G3 300Mhz for about 5 years and been useing a iMac 2Ghz more recently, both of which I have been very pleased with but I know a regular tower has alot more options and complications too.
At first I was planning on buying all my RAM from Apple and just getting the monitor seperate (since they seem pretty overpriced), on futher research I found that the 2GB RAM I was going to get at first is really a min. amount for the system and 4GB much better for getting full performance from the computer. Now from Apple the price difference from 2BG to 4GB is $800, not cheap.
So my first question is where can I find memory thats not so expensive? and what are the good brands to buy?
I also found out that the hard drives that apple uses aren't that good. Was going to get the 250GB HD but I probly don't need that much and can always add more so size isn't a big factor.
So what brand has good hard drives and where would be the best place to buy it?
I'm now planning on getting the computer with the min. HD and RAM and upgrading from there but I also want to be able to put in all the upgrades right away and not have to worry about adding more for awhile.
Last is the monitor but that doesn't concern me as much as the main computer. I want to get atleast a 20", any suggestions you have would be appreciated.
Thanks for taking the time to read my post.

Last fall Intel customers that run heavy servers were clamoring for Intel to get new chips out the door. Servers are often optimized for multi-cpu/cores, and the new chips run cooler, take less power to run, AND less power to cool. The costs of running a server farm makes any reduction in cost important today. Plus, even though they are clocked slower, are somewhat more efficient (improved and more mature?) that and stability are often what drives servers, not the hottest (figuratively and literally) cpus and systems.
So even if/when Intel does start shipping, and tested/qualified for OEMs they may not have any "left over" for awhile for desktop. And it could be they might even end up in Apple Xserves rather than MacPro.
Given that it took until November (late) for Apple to use Xeon in Xserve I almost wondered if it takes longer and more testing (and revising version of server) or if Apple might be hoping to delay and see if Intel could supply the new 53xx chip (would they use single quad-core or two? or have both configurations?).
Often it does take a "patched" or revised OS to deal with any new hardware as well (10.4.9? 10.5.1? something in-between?).
Anyone whose work is really cpu bound on G5 Quad or Mac Pro will probably be first off the line for these, as they were for the other two systems.

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