Great read Cindori!
We are currently in a rush job and need some extra renderpower fast. I am considering buying your exact machine specs with 12gbram and a ATI 4890. I already bought an old G5 case to use as a case to at least keep the appearance of a Mac lol!
I have some questions about the machine I was hoping you could answer:
-Are all SATA bays usable? Are you capable of building a software RAID 0 setup of more than 2 disks with it?
-Do you have a guide about overclocking the machine safely and if so, do I need a bigger CPU fan/watercooling?
-How noisy is your machine compared to your Macpro? I ask this because I really like the silent wisp my macpro makes

. We are also in a small office and noise can become irritating fast.
-Does the mobo have a working optical out audio port?
-Does the Corsair 850watt have the right connectors to connect everything? Do I need to buy extra connectors and which ones/how many?
-Does the firewire work?
-I am going to run Cinema4d 64 bit on it and it will probably use more than 8gb of ram, is the machine capable of running 64 bit apps without problems?
Thanks in advance! I will be making my decision tomorrow. I am really looking forward to this, this machine will be the first of many if it all works out. I plan on building a 15+ machine renderfarm based on the corei7 platform.
Thank you again!