New Computer Advice

[Branaddar]

So I'm a programmer who is currently contracting work through my local computer repair shop (I live in a small town.) My gaming laptop is slowly biting the dust. The last straw for me was a week or so ago, the GPU and/or PSU is on its last legs.

So my contractor has offered to build me a useable gaming desktop when I finish this phase of the project. So I need some advice.

Criteria:
- Must be relatively inexpensive, keeping in mind he gets some decent deals on hardware. Probably in the $500-1000 range.
- Must be entry-level but still have a lot of room to grow
- Must be able to play games at somewhat-decent settings for now
- Must be able to upgrade while replacing as few parts as possible (ie: adding more RAM, swapping out a cheap GPU for a good one, etc.)
- Custom-built, so no links to Dell or shit like that, please. I want drivers and firmware updates that work properly for a change.
- I've had so many heat issues with this laptop I don't want to deal with potential heat issues from overclocking.
- If possible (haven't looked into this,) I'd like it to support multiple displays through one video card? I do a lot of programming and web design, where it's good to have a reference screen and a development screen.

So I'm thinking, to start off we need a decent Mobo and CPUs. Those should be the highest cost in the rig. Dual cores a must, quads... only if there's a significant performance boost for minimal cost. I can always upgrade that later if need be.

RAM, I can make do with 2gb for now probably.

Video card, something mid-level.

Sound card... I can probably deal with on-board sound and get a decent sound card later, right?

Network, again, on board then upgrade to a wireless (or at least something better) later.

DVD drives and peripherals, don't worry about so much. I'm more concerned about the working components. Been a few years since I kept up on the tech, so I'm a bit out of the loop on whether AMD/Intel or nVidia/ATI are better, and in which cases, etc, etc.

If you could add in "why" you picked the components you did, that would be very helpful for me.

Remember, cost vs performance is my biggest concern, as I will be upgrading this box slowly over the coming months/years, I want a core set of components that will allow for that without wasting too much money.

Thanks in advance!

Edit: Also, don't feel you HAVE to give me advice on each and every component. Even if you just want to chime in about the pros and cons of AMD vs Intel dual-core CPUs, that would help a ton!