The first one is the biggest one. you can’t do 3-way sli with the graphics cards you picked out.

The gtx295 is a quad sli ready set up meaning that you can only put two in a case, there are actually two cards on this thing to begin with.

Also if oyu are asking about the pci card slot available, it won’t be usable. the two graphics cards will have an SLI bridge that will make it impossible to have a full sized card in between them. you can try it, but the heat output could melt the card, I have seen it before.

The sound card you chose will work, it is a pci e card if oyu didn’t realize it already. it will work on that 4x slot above the first graphics card.

The case will do fine, but why not buy a mozart in stead, this way your freind could show off the goodies inside, there is no point in owning a computer that is that much and not be able to show it off.

The cpu cooler won’t work. it is for a socket 775 only. you will need to find a socket 1366 compatible cooler. luckily the 965 comes with a cooler until you find a good one.

And I might as well tackle the watercooling question now. if you have an extreme cpu, I assume you will want to overclock it, there is no point in owning one unless oyu are planning on running it at 4.0GHz+ and in which case you will be unable to do so with air cooling. go to http://www.frozencpu for the best selection in water cooling. i will be happy to help you pick out the right set up if oyu email me about this later.

For the power supply you won’t be doing three way sli now, nor would I have recomended it if oyu were going with the quad sli. but this psu will be more than enough to do quad sli. it owuldn’t have been able to do tri sli. Quad Sli requires 2 pci e 6 pin power connectors and 2 pci e 9 pin power connectors to work. this power supply has all of that. Tri sli requires 6 pci e power connectors, all being 6 pins, this psu doesn’t have that. Not an issue since you are going quad right?

i’m never really a fan of 6 railpsu’s because they split up the power among six different outlets. but each pcie connector has about 180watts on one rail plus the minimum 30 amp requirement, so it should be fine.

If he really want the best in gaming hard drives, why not go with an ocz vertex series ssd? you could get 2 128gb drives for the same price as the third 295 you had ot give up, plus they’d out perform the raptors about 10 to 1 easily. then you could buy a good westerndigital 1tb drive forstorage, this is the perfered way to have a computer setup. if oyu plan on having everything on one disk set up they would eventually bogg down the os.

As far as raid goes, the mothebroard has on board raid 0 and this will work great with any raid set up. also raid cards are outdated today, you are better off with the on board controller.

In vista the raid controller for the set up is usually straight forward, but your motherboard manual will tell you what else you have to do, the worst case ecenario is that you’d have to load the raid drivers on a usb drive and install them BEFORE you load vista. simple.

The ram is fine, the cpu will underclock it if nessesary to save the memory controller, btu really the issue was never with speed, it was with the voltage. the speed just feeds off of higher voltages. the memory controller can’t go over certain voltages, btu that is why they are coming out with better ddr3 ram with lower voltages for about the same speeds. the ram you have selected will work fine.

The guy who posted before me either doesn’t know what he’s talking about, or didn’t even pay attention to your build. either way he’s wrong, your build looks good for the most part, but it needs some tweeking. I would reccomend two gtx295’s they do out perfomr the 3 285’s any day on any game. also I strongly recomend the mozart by thermaltake, it is a tower case also, but much more stylish, plus better for water coling. I also reccomend the solid state drives for performance and to avoid the annoying clicking and other loud noises of the velocoraptors.

The only other concern I have is heat. water cool the cpu, this is a big reccomendation. also look into water cooling the grphics cards, those little guys will make the case heat up to the point that it will burn you. trust me I have two similar cards at home that really improved afterwatercooling.

Email me, we will talk more, I think you could use more of my help.

Hope this helps

The Rebellion is waiting

EDIT A quick note, the 965 is a better cpu, it is not only clocked higher, like many have pointed out, but has twice the memory controller that the other two models have. many people don’t realize this fact when they claim the 965 is JUST an over clocked 920, this is how they justify not paying $1000. but truth is that clock for clock the 965 is about 35% faster than the other two models because the memory contorller has twice the throug put possibility.

So, keap an eye out for that myth

The 3 way SLI will not work, but it will with the GTX 285 although you’ll want to confirm that the videocards come with SLI dongles…but they usually do. The power supply has enough connectors for three cards. Its an awesome supply too, pretty much the most power you can draw from a wall outlet. Yes, GTX295’s will likley render the middle PCI slots useless as they’re very fat cards.

The RAM is perfect for that board, though when they’re too fast the mobo just downclocks them.

The case has plenty of space, although if you want the best go with a Liam Li.

Mobo raid also will work fine.

Watercooling is a waste of money in my opinion unless you’re doing ridiculous OCing or you want a completely silent rig. Just make sure you have good airflow, so have tidy cabling and adequate fans. Probably 3 125mm case fans.

EDIT>Also, if you truly want a top end mobo I’d go with an Asus, I don’t have time to find one for you but I have had some bad experiences with EVGA.

2) A 2.1 channel sound system definitely doesn’t go with this setup.

3) Get a better cpu cooler (Noctua or True are my favorites)

4) You don’t really need that power supply (excessive)

5) Get an i7 920 instead and then overclock it.