Questions about my upcoming system...

In my opinion, everything looks good. Some will say that you are headed for a world of hurt with AMD but don't listen, you made a good choice.

If your not locked in, the GA-7DXR is a high performing lower cost alternative to the A7M.

Get brand name PC2100.

Geforce3 is worth the extra money in my opinion.

SoundBlaster has worked perfectly in every system I have ever installed it in.

An IBM 60GXP model might perform a little better (more cost however).

DVD is the only way to go.

What exactly is a modem? Just kidding, I guess it's fine, I haven't used one at home in over a year.

In-win makes high quality stuff and if you are not overclocking, you won't need anything more than the 300W.

I would pay for better cooling than what comes with the retail processor as I used it myself until this hot summer informed me that I would need to use something more expensive than a $10 cooler master hsf. I now use a Taisol CGK w/ Arctic Silver II and it runs more than 20 degrees Celsius cooler than before and it cost me less than $30 dollars shipping included.

Make sure you do your homework when it comes to driver installs as it is very important to upgrade to the latest ones.

Unlike Intel chipsets that will run with any old generic driver and just not perform up to snuff, your system may not run properly until you upgrade your drivers to the latest versions of the Via 4-in-1 and the latest detonator driver from nVidia.

Hope I was able to help you out.

Check out my rig:
<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=3737" target="_new">http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=3737</A>

Thanks a lot for the help. Lots of good advice.

Insight from any others would also be appreciated...

I just put in an order on a similar system today ( ) - here's what I discovered while shopping (often from this board)

-Someone recommended the GA-7DXR. Personally I went for one because it's slightly cheaper than an A7M but also faster, stable, has RAID support, has dualbios, has an extra DDR slot, has built in PCI sound (to tide me over until I can find a Phillips AcousticEdge) and seems easier to O/C - which I'm not looking at yet but why limit myself? Also, the Asus boards have a tendency to read temperature about 10 degrees celcius too high, which means your cooling may BE adequate but not read as being adequate.
-If you're doing graphics intensive stuff you may want to get 512 mb of DDR. I went for 512 of Micron (Crucial if they have it in stock) and it cost under $150 CAD - or under $100 US.
-If you're not buying right now, look at the Radeon 8500 when it comes out. I admit to being biased towards ATI (I'm Canadian, after all )
-I've heard that the Hercules Gametheater XP or Phillips AcousticEdge are less temperamental than the SB. You can make the platinum work, but with the VIA southbridge you may get frustated first (or if you're getting it built don't worry...)
-Someone already said the IBM 60GXR series is better - I've heard that too. Faster, and now reliable. Also, mine was cheaper than a Maxtor.
-I went for a Landmark 298 series tower with a PS upgrade to an enermax 350W. I don't know the In-Wins, but the Landmark is deep, has a built in fan, largely tool-free operation and good ventilation.
-Everyone I've spoken with has said spend the extra few dollars to upgrade the fan and get sme Arctic Silver too. It's not that expensive, so I say do that and get an OEM CPU with a 1 year warranty.

Are you getting a monitor? Viewsonic 19" flat ones have good reputations (I'll tell you if they're justified when my system gets here next week!!)

*As the username implies, I'm generally in the dark*