Need First-Time Build Advice

I am a student soon to be majoring in Computer Engineering and figured it would be useful for me to build my first computer. I am expecting to be utilizing CAD programs, Matlab, lots of programming, etc with some light gaming when I can. I have pretty much settled on the following:

CPU: Intel i7 920
MOBO: EVGA X58 SLI LE Socket 1366 X58 ATX
PSU: Corsair Memory TX750W 750 Watt ATX 12V
HD: Seagate Technology Barracuda 500GB 7,200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s
OS: Vista with upgrade to 7
Case: Antec Nine Hundred Two

I am stuck on what graphics card and RAM to get. I just need a mid-range graphics card and probably about 6 GB of DDR3 RAM. I was suggested the following:

EVGA e-GeForce GTX 260 896MB GDDR3 PCIe 2.0 Graphics Card (Core 216)
OCZ Technology Gold XTC 6GB DDR3-1600 (PC3-12800) CL8 Memory Kit (Three 2GB Memory Modules)

My hope is to use this computer for at least 3 years and have it able to expand (more memory, better graphics, potentially better CPU like i9). I am also interested in eventually overclocking it, but I am currently just starting to get familiar with OC via an old Pentium III. Any advice or suggestions?

Welcome to the forums.

If the HD is a Seagate 7200.12, it will be a little faster than a WD 640 Black (a single 500 GB platter instead of two 320 GB platters).

If it's a 7200.11, do not buy it. Some of the .11's had a firmware problem that bricked the drives. That problem was supposed to fixed in the .12's. For what it's worth, I use a mixture of WD Blacks as boot drives and WD Greens for storage in my computers.

The Antec cases do not come with a case speaker, but I am pretty sure the motherboard has one built in. At least my eVGA 680i did.

Overclocking:
The i7's integrated memory controller changed all the previous rules about overclocking Intel CPU's. Excellent link to overclocking i7's:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/foru [...] _11_0.html

If you are going to OC, you need to know something about thermal management:
Core 2 Quad and Duo Temperature Guide
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] ture-guide

You will also need a better than stock heatsink.

And because this is your first build, here's something to read while you wait for your parts to arrive:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] t-problems

This is primarily a troubleshooting guide, but the first part contains a building checklist that should keep you from making the common mistakes that many first-time builders make.
----------
Building computers since 1977

Thanks! I am going to end up going with the WD 1TB Black. The 640 seems kinda elusive and rare, and I figured that since I am still slightly under budget for this machine (<$1200) I might as well get the larger one and not have to upgrade till much much later.

I hope to eventually have multiple graphics cards which is why the PSU is kinda large as well as the board.

Thanks jsc for those links! Very helpful!