final update:
all the components arrived on 10/5, starting building and encountered the intel pushpin design for the heatsink/cooling fan
wow!
I coudn't do it. I read advice about pushing down on the cross pins, about pushing the most stubborn one first, about using your lap, or on packing foam. I read about difficulties other people had, about turning the pegs clockwise or counterclockwise. It wouldn't work, at one point, the plastic pushpin part split on two pins and I gave up. After reading about how delicate everything is, or the chances for esd, here I was jamming a plastic peg into a round hole, potentially causing how much damage.
I knew I was going to get an aftermarket cooler, just wasn't planning on getting one yet because I wasn't going to overclock yet.
Oh well.
So I started looking online to see what was good, quiet, decently priced, would fit my case and was NOT a pushpin. Maybe non-intel pushpins worked, but I wasn't going to take a chance again and waste money.
Which meant the arctic cooler 7 was out (and it was also no longer on sale at newegg).
I read up as much as I could and some seemed great on one review site and ok on another. I also was worried the cooler would be too large for the case because people (often on newegg) would remark about how large the cooler was.
I eventually decided on the zerotherm fz120. It had gotten good reviews, both for sound and cooling, people had said it fit their sonata case and it was not a pushpin. It also was $40 on zipzoomfly.com with a $10 MIR. I ordered it with the 2 day fedex and on wednesday it arrived.
Very easy to install, I could have used some more handholding from the directions, especially in regards to how to mount the fan to the heatsink using the wire clips, but I figured it out and spent much less time than with the intel pushpins.
Also, regarding size, the fz120 is fairly large, but it easily fits the p5q pro and sonata case. Easily, absolutely nothing to worry about. The MSI 4850 video card also easily fits the case, nothing to worry about in length at all.
I booted the computer up, went to the bios fine, exited and installed vista.
The vista screen stayed the same for so long (2-4 minutes) I thought it had frozen but it eventually got going and installed itself.
Upon welcome, the computer wasn't recognizing the internet, so I had to install the ethernet driver from the p5q mobo cd and then it worked fine.
I also installed the other drivers from the mobo cd, even though everything seemed to be working.
There might now be a conflict between the realtek audio driver and the windows audio driver as I am using onboard sound. Bioshock in particular had sound issues. Might install my old audigy soundcard if the problem continues and see if that works.
On the whole, I am very pleased. I still need to figure out how best to utilize the p5q, and the overclocking capabilities are vast, but I am happy that everything worked, everything fit and I didn't do any damage in the install. This was my first build from the ground up and I was hesitant at points before taking the plunge but glad I did.
Thanks again for the advice along the way.
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