Sleepy_1 to attempt first build this weekend

Hi all... I have been enjoying the posts in the forums... lotsa good info and experience here.

I'm a long time 'puter enthusiast (since early 80's with my first being a TRS-80 from Radio Shack), then 8088, 8086, 286, 486. done lotsa upgrades over the years, but have never gotten around to actually building my own rig... so here goes!!

My thinking is that I want a reasonable upgrade path over the next couple of years, so I opted for the EVGA nVidia 680i mobo w/LGA775 socket... lotsa scalability, OC'ing, etc. This board had a BIOS issue right after release, but guru posts indicate nVidia came up with some doctored BIOS code to resolve issue. Keep my fingers crossed!!

I went with the conroe 6600. Have been buying Intel processors out of the box since the 486, have always gotten great reliability, bang for the buck.

I went with 2G Kingston DDR2-800 on 2 sticks. Price was good, SLI certified (if that really means much, that is)

VGA is XFX nVidia 7900 GT. Best bang for the buck I could find, can upgrade to SLI later if I need to. I'm converting as a long-time ATi fan.

PSU is Hiper 580W. I liked modular cabling solution. Power rating, 2 rails OK for upgrade path (I hope!!). Not too may complaints, lotsa love on the boards for this one.

I'm trying my first RAID 0 on 2 WD SE-16, 250G SATA. Want to go to 0+1 later this spring. My real deal is flight simming, so I need killer read times from disc... hope this will speed things up.

CPU cooler is Masscool 8w014. Got it in yesterday, looks pretty good, but we'll see how it does under pressure. Went with Arctic Silver TG.

Went with LG DVD-RW. We own an LG HDTV which is GREAT. Hope they can make a decent burner as well. Also, got an internal card reader.

I'm putting it all in the NZXT Apolla case. This came in yesterday, too. 3 120mm fans oughta keep temps under control.

Rig came in at $1500. 8O

I'm not really big into modding or OC'ing, but I do want to crank a few xtra MHz on the conroe! Looks like it might be pretty fun.

Keep all the good info flowing. I'll try to jump in now and then if I have questions, or in the unlikely event I can add to the community wisdom. Again, thanks for all the great posts... keep it up!

The Sleepy_1