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Papst is expensive. Most fans are 15-25 euros over here, depending on size (80 to 120). 120mm is 28dB max, like I stated before. It delivers a LOT of flow for that sound level.

Core 2 Duo E-series are good (we've just received the second batch), but it still needs 65W. Core 2 Duo T series only needs 31W. The price is almost the same, the mobile boards cost almost the same. It really isn't that much of a difference any more.
When we started with mobile chipset motherboards, the cost would be like 300 euros (vs 90 for same quality normal). And the price of the mobile CPU used to be much higher than a normal one. And even better: performance of mobile CPUs has gone up relatively speaking, while feature wise they now are the same (dual core, VT, 64-bit, XD-bit, etc). Also the choice in boards has broadened, with in the past only A-Open producing good boards, while now almost all big manufacturers produce mobile chipset motherboards.
Question for most people IMO is: do you really need the performance of an E-series CPU?

bit perfect is one thing, low jitter is another. What do you intend for a low jitter digital out?

For the sound out, I would get an external USB source. Much easier to isolate from the computer's internal noise. I'm using a battery powered Red Wine Audio USB Select with terrific results. Blows away CD transport.

For the computer, I have mostly built a machine that I wanted to be quiet and consume low power. It's not up and running yet, but I'll post the important pieces here to maybe save you some time in selecting components, as I did a lot of research. I would use the brand new Core 2 Duo chip because it is very fast, yet runs very cool (which leads to quiet).

Antec Solo Case - $90
Seasonic 430W Power Supply - $100
Intel DP965LT Motherboard - $140
Core 2 Duo E6600 (waiting for availability) - $330 (cheaper Core 2 Duo chips exist)
Western Digital 500Gig (don't get a Raptor, noisy seeks) - $220

If you want more storage space, probably the easiest thing to do is to get a motherboard with built-in Raid 5 (the one listed above does NOT have this). 3 500G drives gives you 1 TB of storage in Raid 5, and is redundant, so that if one of the drive fails, you just plunk in another drive, and it is rebuilt from the other 2. Nice! As for myself, all my files, including music, fits easily onto a 500G drive, so I just keep a second (300G) drive in the machine which gets nightly incremental backups of any file adds/changes/deletes, courtesy of freeware Karen's Replicator.

Good luck.

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no idea, but im happy to trade some jitter for the versatility of a 1tb file server with web and email. im not looking for perfection, just an approximation of it

I forgot to mention the optical drives, for ripping and CD/DVD playback I have an Asus DVD-E616A(review), looks like since I purchased it there is a newer edition DVD-E616A2

It is a great drive, it's extremely quiet (Quietrack), runs @ UDMA100 as opposed to most running at UDMA33, 2MB Buffer, I don't know if it's just hype or not but they claim to have an Auto Vibration Reducing System(DDSSII)...

For burning I used the NEC DVDRW3520

i've got an antec p180, p4 2.8 s478 ect.

the only fans i have are the 120mm (slowest speed when hooked to zalman fan mate 2) for the xp120 hsf and an 120mm exhaust fan (5V) for the case, plus antec neoHE 500w PSU. the 120mm fans i am using yate loon (nexus OEM)

now the loudest part in my computer are the harddrives. i've got 2 samsung spinpoints p120 series hdds and a WD 250g sata II KS series. they require to be hdd suspended for absolute silence as that's pretty much all i hear now.