Ending a five year lurk to ask for feedback

[Ward]

Hey everyone, none of you know me yet, but I have been lurking around this site for around five years now. I used the resources here heavily when I built my last systems, and though I did not end up going for extreme quiet due to budgetary constraints, I was steered in a good direction with my Antec P180 cases and quiet power supplies. I have always been very appreciative of the information available here, and so this time I am going to ask for some direct feedback as I move forward with planning some new systems.

The parts I have chosen so far seem to be fairly well liked on these boards, as well as some of the OC enthusiast boards, so I am pretty certain of these:

Gigabyte GA-790FXTA-UD5 AM3 motherboard
AMD HDZ965FBGMBOX Phenom II 965 BE (C3 stepping)
Crucial BL2KIT25664TB1337 Ballistix Tracer 1333 cl7 (in blue for aesthetics)
Nexus NX-5000 R3 PSU (I am also considering the 5300 for it's modular design, but I like the smaller form factor of the 5000)

I am having some trouble choosing some of the other parts for this system. I am interested in finding quiet optical drives, but other than one model of Samsung optical drive, I have not seen much about these. I'd love to go blu-ray (at least read capabilities, but I am not willing to spend an arm and a leg to make it happen, and will likely settle on DVD). I am really up in the air about CPU coolers. I have briefly been looking at the Zalman cnps10x_flex with a Nexus b&w or two hooked to it. I have also been looking at the Silverstone Fortress 2 case. It is fairly expensive though, and although the design of it and it's all metal construction appeal to me, I am wondering if I can possibly get a better case for less. I am looking at both mid tower and htpc cases, with a leaning toward mid tower for this project. I would consider a full tower if it had significant benefits over other offerings. For HDDs I'm fairly likely to go with WD Velocraptors, but with the availability of SATA 6Gb/s on the board I know there may be a better option, if not in the near term, certainly in the long term. I am planning to do some light gaming on this system, but nothing that will require the highest end (read hottest) video cards available. I am hoping to compromise on some nice mid level Radeon that won't break the bank either.

I am not planning on doing overclocking presently, but I researched and used quality parts in my last systems and they lasted me about five years with no upgrades and no part failures. I am hoping for a repeat. I am very open to any sort of input, but I will say that after a long debate between the i5 750 and the 965 BE (C3) I am pretty well settled on my motherboard and processor choice. Sorry for the very long post, but I am breaking five years worth of silence so... hello SPCR, and thanks!

[jessekopelman]

For HDDs I'm fairly likely to go with WD Velocraptors

You say Velociraptors, plural, and I don't see the point of that. If you can live with just 300 GB, yes VR might be the best way to go, but if you need more storage than that, why not go with a 60 GB SSD coupled with large format 3.5" drives for additional storage?

[Ward]

Sorry, I should have clarified. I am planning to build multiple systems. On my current systems I ended up with multiple drives in the case for ease of managing multiple operating systems. It's possible I could end up in that situation again, but 300GB will likely be sufficient for my purposes in any of the systems. I plan to do the bulk of my media storage in a network attached RAID in an HTPC case.

[CA_Steve]

I'd still go with an OS SSD + data HDD instead of the velociraptor as it would be faster, quieter, and possibly cheaper, depending on the size of the SSD.

[Ward]

The only think I am really waiting on with the SSDs is SATA 6Gb/s support. And a price drop. For the capacities I want the drives are still pretty ridiculously expensive for good name brand models. Pairing that with the fact that current models easily saturate the 3Gb/s bandwidth, I figured it could be worth holding out a bit longer. The silent running aspect is certainly attractive, but I have been consistently pleased with the noise levels of the Raptor series considering how fast they are.