[Nessuno]

hmm...time for me to join the debate. I do have much of your orginal spec except my rig is more powerful. If i was to advise myself and you, i would put the XFX 790 ultra board on your list and also an XFX alpha dog 512 single slot graphics card (i choose this card because it is reliable under stress. Nvidia driver set 169.32 is the most stable). The 790 is a expensive board but if you want something really reliable....remember, you are about to build a super-rig and pushing it to the extreme. invest in good components.

If you stick with the reliable striker extreme 680 (my current mobo), make sure you have Bios 1503 to get the max performance out of the Q6600...some say the 780 and 790 mobos are good for the Q6600 because the Northbridge has been redesigned to deal with heat better and DD3 memory.

Make sure you get a SLACR GO stepping Q6600 proc.

good luck. you will need to be experienced to take on a 700 series Nvidia mobo build. However, you will not regret the experience. My rig purs like a kitten.

As for cases, you will like the coolermaster Rc stacker 832 or the new Cosmos S case. It has beautiful options for watercooling.

I have a X-Fi plat but would choose Vista Ultimate 64 instead of 32. its just that practically all your hardware is desgned with 64bit in mind....

Just in case you are wandering about the load stress my machine can handle. I had to deal with a Adobe premiere video project that had 250 gig of video and 100 gig of audio. the rig rendered the finished High definition production in six days without crashing. my rig doesn't just play games!