Reality Factory

Hello all! I have a few computer questions here. I am curious if I am just greedy for speed or am in need of a pc upgrade. I currently have a desktop with
4GB 667MHz ram,
a 256MB GDDR3 Geforce 8600GT Overclocked,
a 250GB 7400RPM HDD with 16MB cache,
Core 2 Duo 2.13Ghz with 4MB L2 cache (1066FSB).
I have a dual monitor set up with a 23" HD widescreen monitor and 19" widescreen monitor running Vista Ultimate SP2 64bit.

I was thinking about the following upgrades:
CPU - Quad Core with 2x4MB L2 cache
RAM - 8GB
GPU - GeForce GTS 250 1GB DDR3
HDD - (Not really thinking its worth it)Maybe get a 10,000RPM or faster HDD with 16MB or 32MB cache(I don't think a 32MB cache 10,000 or faster RPM drive exists).

I am a computer science major and built my current pc back in 2007. It has done me well so far but now this fall I will be taking all computer classes, with a few of them being coding. I am looking for a speedy computer. I don't want to waste time waiting for it, because I don't want to waste my life in front of it doing homework. I think I should upgrade the graphics card and RAM at least. With 4GB it seems to top out at about 50% ram used, it never likes to use much more. And if I get enough money upgrade the CPU. I want my pc to be as efficient as possible. Am I going overboard with wanting to upgrade my pc?

My opinion is that you can never have a computer too fast or powerful (unless you have a library of DOS games ).
If your ram only peaks at about 2GB used, I don't think that giving it 6 more GB would make much sense (as it only uses 2GM of RAM)
You can always get a bigger hard drive, maybe one of those shiney TB ones?

Unless you want to do some high performance computing (like simulations of physical systems) or testing the unreal engine 4 I don't think you will see much practical effect. I'm still doing most of my programming work on my laptop which is seven years old by now. And even that system completes my smaller molecular dynamics simulations in a reasonable amount of time...

Thanks for the input. I think I will just go for a graphics card upgrade as my old 8600GT seems to be having slight trouble with dual monitors. Windows tells me to get rid of transparency or change to classic display mode as current graphic settings are affecting performance. Not to mention a nice new GeForce GTS 250 1GB card would be welcomed. I don't have much trouble with my 8600, but since I added this second 23" widescreen full HD monitor, a new GPU may help. I think I may be asking a little much from my old 256MB card.