dvd burners will burn cd-r's. i've never heard of it shortening it's life. can't see why it would anyway. i have the sony dual format and it's great.

vid card: i'd definitely go with an ati right now. i want the 9800 pro.

as for processor/mobo. ... get the mobo to fit the cpu. i'm an amd fan, but intel is doing some really good stuff right now. hyper-threading is the future me thinks. most mobo's are the same, just depends on the features you want. i'd go with something that has gigabit lan, even if you're not going to use it yet.

and you can't really say intels are faster as a general statement. it depends on what you're doing, and you can't go by the GHZ alone.