Buil;ding my first system, opinions welcome

The antec case with the EA650 comes with a significantly better power supply than the raidmax. What are you going to be using the system for?

I would suggest swapping the 900+EA650 for an antec 900 and a corsair 750TX or Antec TP-750 so you have the option to add a second video card in the future.

If you are using it for gaming and not a ton of adobe CS4 work or video editing swap down to 6GB of ram, which saves you enough to cover the price of the 750tx.

I'm going to be using the rig for a combination of gaming, multimedia and school work. I'll be running xp 64bit until windows 7 comes out.

I know this might be a bit overkill, but I wanted to build a system that wouldn't be obsolete in the next year, hence the 12 Gb ram.

I'm starting to lean towards the antec case, it seems to be better built, has much better reviews and comes with much better and more thought-out cooling and design.

I'm also wondering, I can get the ram cheaper if I get it in 2 packs of 6Gb. would that have any effect on the performance when compared to a 12Gb pack?

looking at these (getting 2x for 12Gb):
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produ [...] 6820227388
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produ [...] 6820227477
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produ [...] 6820231225

I have an antec 900 and love both the looks and the airflow. There are cheaper cases with similar airflow if you are on a budget, but I think the 900 looks really nice also (its not just a boring box shape) if you have the money.

This is a rosewill case that is similar:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6811147125

It looks to me like the antec's front fans will blow cool air straight into the back grill of the vaporx GPU which should provide excellent cooling. You wont be able to put a drive in the drive bay on the same level as your graphics card (with 8 other drive bats, who cares). I also moved the front fans up so the top one blows cool air directly over the RAM and my drives are at the bottom.

The main thing I wish I had done is got a modular PSU so I didnt have a wad of ugly cables lying in the bottom of my case for everyone to see.

Something like this with enough power to SLI/Crossfire and add extra drives later:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817371024