heatsink/case question

I'm building my first system piece by piece (i'm poor ) so far I have

ABIT KN8 SLI Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Toledo 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Dual Core Processor Model ADA4400CDBOX

Antec LifeStyle SONATA II Piano Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 450Watt SmartPower 2.0 ATX 12V V2.0 for AMD & Intel systems Power Supply

2 BFG GeForce 6600 128MB PCI-Express SLI Video Cards

2 GB Corsair 4 x 512mb corsair

My question is the antec case has a special airduct vent that hovers above the motherboard so I want to know of a good small heatsink that would be compatible with this case/airduct.

This is my first build so I'm trying to do a lot of research but haven't really read much about heatsinks and don't want to fry a good processor or any other parts.

Price is also an issue I have about $150 to get a DVD drive, hard drive heat sink etc.

Please tell my you don't mean that.. get 1 6800GS, Ati X850XT or better yet a 7800GT. All of those cards will outperform 2 6600's (especially the 7800.. its WAY better), and you can get another one later, if you really want to go that route.

But please, don't buy 2 6600's.. You'll regret it , I swear..

everything i listed i already purchased. I had a $500 dollar budget and got the two 6600 for $100 bucks.

it was the best option in my budget...

www.woot.com

during their woot off

I have the same exact cpu/hsf and case. You probably won't need the air duct at all. I removed mine because it takes up so much space. My idle temp is 37°C and under load it's 45°C.

where'd you get the rest of that stuff for so cheap? I'd kill to get all that for the price. Particularly, how much did you pay for the mobo and cpu?

The case-- I have a sonata II, the ducting is pretty useless. Might be fun to mess around with once in a while, but you'll probably get better cooling if you leave it off and put two 120mm fans (one comes in the case already) in.

As for the HSF, it depends on how quiet you want your system to be-- I've been building a silent one for a while now. If you want something really quiet, I'd suggest getting a Zalman CNPS7000-AlCu, or the 7700-AlCu for your CPU. Don't get the all copper one, the cooling difference is usually less than a single degree celsius. I have a 7700cu connected to a fan controller, and with the fan at 12v, it keeps my P4 Prescott literally 20 deg. celsius cooler at load and about 10-15 at idle. With the controller at 5v, it's dead silent.

And get some non-stock vga coolers if you're going the silent route as well. Like arctic cooling nv series for you. The zalman ones, vf700 series, are also really good.

www.silentpcreview.com