There is a big difference between $500 and $1000...

Try reinstalling your sound drivers

I've read that the HP Mini 311 was pretty good because of its Nvidia Ion chip.

Why would you want water cooling? Are you planning some major overclocking?

So I've had my rig for about a year now and was looking to upgrade some stuff. I currently have an intel core 2 duo E8500. I'm just wondering what you guys think. Should I pick up an AMD? I really don't know what to look for...

starky729

It depends, A what is your budget. B, are you willing to upgrade/change your motherboard?

You'll probably want to get triple channel memory if you go that route...

SSD probably won't really take off (for non gaming rigs anyway) until the price lowers a bit. Right now you might be better off getting a 15k rpm drive. Just my humble opinion.