Well, it's all done. It took me about 3 days at 3-4 hours per day to get everything built. I took it nice and slow and read all of the documentation. I will relate my general experience from inception to completion as there seems to be several others contemplating massive overhauls and/or complete builds right now.
Preliminary Shopping Phase:
As I mentioned earlier, my previous gaming rig was an Alienware I selected component by component through their online building interface. This time I went through Newegg and bought absolutely everything piece by piece, hand selecting each component down to individual cables very carefully. I spent about 3 weeks savoring that educational process during which time I conferred with Tildeath and others, read reviews, bought builder books and magazines, etc. I highly recommend taking your time during this phase, my original design concept I had in mind after plinking away with the FalconNorthwest kit builder only vaguely resembles what I ended up with and it's a good thing, in retrospect.
Case & Cooling:
This was very important. I almost messed up, but thanks to Tildeath's advise I didn't and ended up with the Tempest. I really wanted to be able to stick with an air cooled system for now and the Tempest is up to the job. I was unable to get an aftermarket CPU fan as I chose a brand new EVGA X58 Classified Extended form factor motherboard for which no CPU Heat Sink & Fan kit seems to fit yet. So, even with the stock Intel Fan & heatsink I have no cooling problems yet due to the tremendous air flow of the Tempest. The design of the Tempest is great, but the stock fans are very loud and don't push a lot of air. I replaced them all with great fans (not to mention pretty lights). The PC cooling 860 W power supply is cool to the touch. The Triple Hyper X 2000MHz ram is also cool to the touch w/o a dedicated fan thanks to very tall heat spreaders. My only con for the Tempest is the lack of externally accessable drivebays, it has only 3. So, I had to pass on the 2 bay LCD fan controller.
CPU & Memory:
Per my itemized breakdown previously posted I went with the i7 920, a very cost effective yet powerfull CPU solution. At the last minute I was able to get the latest/greatest ram, which I am glad I did as the heat sinks are much better and the timing is tight at 8-8-8-21, @ 2000MHz. For those that don't know what that means, let's just say that it's EXTREMELY fast. I am a coward about overclocking my expensive toys, but with the EVGA X58 Classified Board I am sure I could overclock both the RAM and the CPU generously. Although I would not want to with the CPU just yet with only a stock CPU fan & heatsink and no liquid cooling system. But, that will leave room for future improvement.
Video Card:
I went with the EVGA GTX285 SSC Edition(cherry-picked for quality and pre-hard-overclocked by the factory). Arguably, this card is the absolute best non-dual gpu, single card graphics solution for gaming available. I did not see the point in going with the extra expense, space, heat & power requirements for SLI. I selected that card because it is pre-overclocked, thefore it outperforms all but the newest dual-gpu cards but with less heat & power needs and compatability issues.
Overall Experience:
I must say, I enjoyed myself thoroughly. I bought absolutely everything I needed for this build, including a 24 inch Widescreen LCD gaming monitor retail for well under $3,000. To build something like this through FalconNorthwest after tax and shipping would have been about 3 times that much. I had nothing but good experiences from my direct interactions with Newegg. They allowed me to RMA, for a full refund, the slower memory I had bought so I could instead buy the limited stock & faster memory, even though their memory policy is strictly equivalent/same item exchange only, no refunds. Their shipping was prompt and reasonable. I had to RMA several things, including the Noctua CPU Fan & Heatsink that wouldn't fit the motherboard and the dual bay fan controller that would not fit in my case. The entire RMA process was a breeze. I will never, ever buy a pre-made, custom built computer again, it was well worth the effort. I feel like a proud father of my computer.
New Gaming Rig in Aces High:
I got Aces High up and running at 1900X1200 with the high res texture pack, all possible settings completely maxed in wide screen mode. Aces High can't touch this rig, no matter what's going on... 50 planes, smoke, fire, buff boxes galore, whatever, this rig still pegs at max FR.
