Having built too many systems to count over the past decade and a half, including the most recent being my own about two weeks ago, here are my jaded, opinionated thoughts:
Keep the internal floppy and CD. Here's why:
1. Cost: almost nil. Go to NewEgg.com, and you'll find floppy drives costing around $10, and you can get a CD BURNER for as little as $27. I have recent bought SIX of these cheap burners for clients, and they are all fast, quiet, and have thus far been reliable. You can install XP from them, and obviously, they are great for backups.
2. Energy usage and Heat: almost nil. Assuming you are not building a mini-ATX or SFF system (I just built an SFF for my main gaming rig), your CD ROM will be high in the case at the front, generating almost no heat, and any that it does is far away from the CPU and drives. The top front of the case is sort of a dead zone for airflow, so it won't hurt overall system airflow. The floppy is lower and can keep the HD from cooling effectively in a small case, but by spacing it out and keeping the airflow good, this won't be a problem either. Both devices trake almost no electricity when they are not in use anyway.
3. Flexibility. Why worry about whether an external drive is readable during the install? Why have no way to perform a built-in backup? Why remove the floppy and really make it harder to diagnose any catostrophic hardware problem?
Keep those drives. That's my opinion. And remeber, you asked. ;-)
-Llama
