[Animal]

Depends on the $$$ you have to spend, I guess. I can't say as I've heard anything bad about Dell, although they do tend to be a little wimpy on their components sometimes.
State of the Art? P4 2.53Ghz on a 533MHZ bus, 2 WD 120gig HD w/8mb cache running under RAID 0, Geforce 4 4600, SB Audigy Platinum, Klipsch ProMedia 5.1 Speakers and Sony 21" Monitor. So far, that's state of the art for consumer PC's. Doesn't really matter where you get it from.
My advice would be build it yourself, but if your not so inclined look at price and warranty. Voodoo's got the best in the bus, 3years complete plus a pretty sweet upgrade policy. Alienware rocks too.
Do you want a DVD burner or just a plain ol' CD burner. How about Personal Cinema?
You need to ask yourself one question and be honest about it: What will I be using my computer for? Yeah, a P4 2.53GHZ on a 533Mhz FSB is nice, but there's no software available now or probably in the next 2 years that will even come close to harnessing that power. Benchmark Testing is cool, but can you really notice the difference between 140fps and 120fps in Quake3? Will your monitor even hit those refresh rates?
State of the art is nice, but 1 generation old is just as nice, but half the price. Just my two cents worth