Hi,
I have been researching how to put together a good gaming pc for a while now, and I finally have a list parts that I think I need. Can anyone comment on anything I have overlooked, incompatabilities, bottlenecks in performance, etc? I am especially concerned about the compatability and how to go about adequately air cooling this rig (will the 2 graphics cards need their own cooling?). Any help WOULD be greatly appreciated.

Parts:
Motherboard:EVGA 122-CK-NF68-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI
CPU:Core 2 Quad Q9450
Graphics cards: EVGA GeForce 8800GTS 512mb X2 in sli
RAM: G.SKILL 8GB (4 X 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 800
HD: Western Digital Caviar SE 500GB 7200 RPM X2 in raid 0
PSU:HIPER HPU-5K880 880W ATX12V v2.2 & EPS12V v2.91
Case: Antec P182 mid tower
CPU cooler: Scythe SCASM-1000 120mm Sleeve Andy Samurai MASTER CPU Cooler



Wow . . . that's a very nice rig.
It seems that a few fans are already fitted but you may want to max out the fans if you're worried about temperatures. I believe the P182 can hold 5 120mm fans and comes fitted with (conflicting reviews) either 2 or 3. For a system like that I would recommend at least 3 fans.
Are you planning on doing any overclocking?
If so, you may need some more fans and may also want to replace the standard fans with some that push more air.
I guess you're going to be running a 64-bit OS, right? Otherwise around 5Gb of RAM will be wasted.
You've obviously thought this through very well, I'm impressed.

P.S. welcome to the forums.welcome to the forums estraven.

here are a couple things to consider...

1. motherboard- your spending quite a bit on this build, i would recommend spending the extra $80 and getting a 780i mobo. with the 780i you get 45nm processor support and PCI-E 2.0 technology... and not to mention the 3-way SLI.

2. CPU Heatsink- i recommend the thermalright ultra 120 extreme with a scythe kaze jyuni 120mm fan. the ultra 120 has been the top contender for CPU cooling for quite some time.Do the 680i boards not support 45nm?
My E8200 worked fine with my (returned as it was faulty) XFX 680i SLI board, WITHOUT even a BIOS update.
And 3-way SLI is not possible on the 8800GTS, it only supports 2-way.
PCIE 2.0 is also not that great, there's little to no difference in performance as the X16 gen 1 bus is not yet being used fully.Thanks everyone for the warm welcome .
I will not be overclocking this pc, at least to start, but I would like room (power and cooling capacity) to do so if/when I choose to. I really don't know enough about overclocking to attempt it yet, and am not SURE the benefits are worth the possible risks involved. I will take your advice and install 3-4 non-standard 120mm fans in the case, would the scythe kaze jyuni 120mm fans recommended for the CPU cooler be fine for this as well? I am also aware of the 32-bit ram limit so I will be using the 64-bit vista, but is there really a great benefit in going from home premium to ultimate?

Homer, I will take your advice on the CPU heatsink and fan. It was difficult for me to differentiate the 680i from the 780i motherboards other than the 3-way SLI and the PCI-E 2.0. I am going to give up the 3-way benefit by getting the GTS cards, so that isn't much of an issue. If, as Calum says, the PCI-E 2.0 is not running very efficiently right now, would I really see a noticeable benefit in the upgrade from that standpoint? And does the limitation on PCI-E 2.0 stem from the software (easily upgradeable later) or hardware utilization? Also, I am now seeing that in most cases the 680i supports dual core 45nm but not quad core 45nm, so thank you for bringing that to my attention. I think that will be the deciding factor to get a 780i.PCI-E 2.0 is a hardware, not software, specification/limitation.
It may become useful in the future, but personally I think that you'll be upgrading your motherboard before PCI-E 2.0 is necessary for graphics cards to work efficiently.
I wasn't aware that the 680i chipset didn't support quad core 45nm CPUs, in which case I would advise getting a 780/790i SLI board for upgradeability. 780i is basically just an update of 680i whilst 790i offers a 1600MHz FSB as standard so it's better in the long run, but more expensive too.
The Scythe fans should be fine for case fans as well as CPU fans. I can cool my E8200 very well in a Coolermaster Elite 330 with an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro and 2 120mm fans. Even at 3.2GHz (the maximum it would post at due to my RAM) the temperature never went above 60C on a stress test. You'll have no troubles cooling your system with a far better case and cooler.
I wouldn't recommend Vista Ultimate myself, Home Premium will be fine for most people.