This is a Noctua heatsink with fans mounted to both the front and back i.e a heatsink sandwiched by two fans. One fan pushes air into the heatsink and the other pulls air from the heatsink thus ensuring fast unidirectional airflow.
Not sure what the rest of your system spec is but generally it is best to run memory in pairs so you can run dual channel. With the low cost of DDR it is probally best to buy 2 x 2GB of PC8500 DDR2 (1066Mhz) than to upgrade what you currently have. Go for CAS 5 (5-5-5-15) as this is fast but due to their abundance is not ridiculously expensive. Good brands are Geil/G-skil/Corsair around $60 for 4GB.
Had a quick look at CustomPC mag and on the net and for your budget the following spec would seem OK: CPU - i7 920 Mobo - Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R RAM - Corsair Dominator TR3X6G1600C8D HDD - 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F1 (HD103UJ) Cooler - Titan Fenrir (Forget liquid unless your know what you are doing and into serious overclocking) PSU - Be Quiet Dark Power Pro 850W GPU - GTX 295 Case - Antec 900 (MKII) - MKII Gives you better cabling space This set-up should give you OC to 4Ghz which together with the i7 power and triple channel memory will be very fast.
4GB (2x2GB for dual channel) is enough really as games rarely use more than this. However if you have a triple channel mobo i.e. using i7 I would go for 6GB (3x2GB) for future proofing. WRT bandwidth/timings I would go for DDR3 CL8 1800mhz to give yourself some overclocking headroom as this is only $85 (price has really fallen since introduction of triple channel).
If you had to go for quad then I would go for the Q9400 however personally for the money I would go E8500, on a 425 FSB quad will go to 3.4Ghz but E8500 will go to 4Ghz and both have 6MB cache and you can use the $30 to invest in good cooler for overclocking. This is assuming that you after a gaming rig; if you are after a media rig (multiple apps, video encoding, etc) then quad is better.
If it is a gaming rig you want and have about $900 then I would not go for AMD but for Intel Duo Core and overclock to 4.1Ghz using the following components: Mobo - BIOSTAR TPower I45 - N82E16813138118 PSU - Antec EA650 650W CPU - Intel E8400 Duo core RAM - CORSAIR XMS 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) - N82E16820145215 HDD - SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD102UJ 1TB Cooler - ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro - N82E16835186134 GPU - As you selected Case - As you selected but an Antec Nine Hundred (MKII) Black Steel is highly recommended - N82E16811129021 Good luck and don't forget to budget for an operatiing system.
I recommend a GTX 295 (fastest card on the market to date) or wait for the 4890X2 which is due out soon as vendors are clearing out the 4870X2 stock. In both cases your CPU will need to be at 3.5GHz + to avoid bottlenecking these cards. If you want something to tie you over then a GTX 275 to retain your option to SLI. (GTX 295 is essentially two GTX 275).
If you plan to OC and still want to maintain the recommended 1:1 CPU to Memory ratio I would suggest PC8500 (1066) RAM instead of PC6400 (800). This will give you the bandwidth without compromising the CAS latency. Also for OC you may want to replace the stock cooler with an AC Freezer 7 Pro or Titan Fenrir (depending on your budget). WRT HDD, if you don't have one then a Samsung F1 Spinpoint (1TB or 750MB) is very good.
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