Guess I'll add my progress report, I think I have a pretty good memory, though my order might also be a bit off.
1. Was out of the loop about computers for a few years, but heard a thing or two about how loud computer parts are getting, especially hard drives.
2. Got a new computer: athlon 2000 with a thermaltake volcano 9, cuda 4, two extra vantec stealths, and a noisy 350watt heroichi.
3. Was shocked by how incredibly loud the TT fan was at full blast, turned it down to ~2300, found out it sucks much better than it blows.
4. Replaced the tiny whiny HSF on my mx440 with a CNPS3000.
5. Killed the TT fan with a vacuum cleaner, replaced it with one of the vantec stealths.
6. Snipped out the stamped grills for my rear and top fan and made a big airhole underneath the drive cage.
7. Got a spinpoint with a JVC motor, put CD images on it for use with virtual drives to not have to use CD's, eventually unplugged it to make it a backup drive.
8. Put a 33 ohm resistor adapter(made out of a broken zalman 56 ohm resistor adapter) on one of the vantec stealths, moved it from the top slot to the rear, 5volted the 2500 rpm xinruilian fan that came with the case, moved it to the top slot.
9. Replaced the 33ohm resistor for the rear fan with a 56ohm, put the 33 ohm one on the CPU fan.
10. Made a crude cardboard duct connecting the CPU and rear case fans to keep the heat out of the PSU, which only quieted it a little.
11. Replaced the noisy Heroichi with a 12cm fan fortron (
So that was the major problem recently!)
12. Put the hard drive on foam in the middle of the case floor.
13. Replaced the CPU fan with a nexus.
14. Put both the 33 and 56ohm resistors on the rear vantec stealth.
15. Replaced rear vantec stealth with a 5volted ZMF1.
16. Raised case a bit.
17. Got a 3700AMB, 5volted the stock antec fan, put some foam in between the plastic fan holder and the case, tried the 350W smartpower that came with it.
18. Switched back to the Fortron.
19. Removed the hard drive cage, put the hard drive on foam on a styrofoam platform over the cage mounting point.
20. Drilled out the hard drive cage mounting point, put spinpoint at the back of the case floor on foam.
21. Snipped out the thick honeycomb fan grill, mounted the rear fan with zipties with some foam for dampening.
22. Made a small duct to turn the CPU air backwards a bit.
23. Moved the PSU outside the case.
24. Replaced the D12SH in the PSU with a nexus, replaced the palomino 2000 with a mobile barton, replaced the volcano 9 with an SI97, got a zalman fan controller.
25. Put the 80mm nexus behind the PCI slot covers, made a duct to have it cool the spinpoint better than when I had an 8cm fan crudely aimed at it.
26. Put 4 small pieces of foam between each hard drive and the big piece of foam it's on to improve cooling.
27. Installed linux on the spinpoint, no longer need to have the cuda on.
28. Tried replacing the stock antec at 5v with the D12SH I pulled from my fortron at 3.5-4.5V, switched back.
29. Got rid of the rear fan, ducted 92mm nexus CPU fan(which was always blowing up) to the rear fan opening.
30. Rotated the external fortorn 90 degrees, from on its ceiling to on its side so the sleeve bearings wouldn't wear out, took ~30hrs to wear in again.
And seriously, other than the bare bones of the OS, I'm sure those Apple's are easy to use if their stores are any indiciation. Cept for games maybe, they can do anything else just (more?) efficiently!
The parts are basically PC, but just different enough to make them incompatible. And Apple controls the licensing, so not just anyone can make and sell Apple parts. It's not that different from what the likes of Dell and Gateway used to do with their PC's, only on a more broad scale.
back up drive removed and put into external drive enclosure 
