This case is awesome. The black poweder-coating and improved cuts in the case for routing cables is such an upgrade from the original P180. I removed the drive cages and ran my single HDD in the upper drive bay. My optical and sound card will be in the lower two bays. I dont use the dvd-rom much at all, and only use the sound card at LANs, so I dont feel the location is bad.

The Rampage II Gene is just a wicked board. The packaging was awesome and, despite being open box, had everything in its original packaging. Something I learned with m P5W-DH Deluxe is that the extras of the "Deluxe" motherboards are sometimes not worth the extra cost.

While the P5W's wifi was great, I rarely used the dual LAN and never used the sound card or the wireless remote.

Getting the GENE is nice because it comes with 3dmark06 and Kaspersky AV. But I dont feel like I paid for features I wouldn't use.

The north bridge is AWESOME.

To reduce clutter behind the back of the case, I took the liberty of chopping off unused PSU connectors. Luckily, I spoke with a Silverstone rep to get replacements before I hacked them up. I am really happy with the amount of copper I removed from the cables. I only use the connectors I NEED!

Eventually I settled on this. I think its the best config I could have come up with, given the circumstances. Now the cpu cooler pulls up and the 200mm big boy fan pushes it out of the case. The HR-03 has its own fan to both pull air from the CPU and push air thru the CPU cooler. I know that a lot of heat from the GPU may mess with CPU temps, though. Unfortunately...

In the end, I am fairly happy with the results. I will certainly continue to improve things. here is a short list of what I want to do:

1. Cool the VRM on the 4870. While the core only gets to about 47-48C under furmark load, the VRMs skyrocket to 90-100C after only a few minutes. I have IanH heatsinks on them now, and the ramsinks with the HR-03 kit, but its just not enough. Even the intake 120mm fans on full blast dont help enough.
2. I want to replace the NB thermal interface material with AS5. Honestly I had planned to do this but I forgot ;*(. It's going to be a HUGE pain to do.
3. Gotta continue to improve cabling. The bottom right of the motherboard is a mess in my opinion. It really should be better than that.
4. The back panel is white. I really want to paint it black or put some black material over it so the whole back panel blends into the powder-coating.
5. Need longer SATA cables for easier routing (24", probably). I tried to make them exactly the length they need to be, but I didn't leave myself any room for routing.
6. Front panel cables that I dont use need to be removed (eSATA, Audio, etc...)

I hope you enjoyed my build log, now it's time to stop building and start playing some games!