-
I’m running onboard TI Firewire on my Gigabyte board (see sig.) with no problems.
-
Depends on the case. Noctua fans are smooth and quiet. I have an NF-U12P SE2 CPU cooler with dual 120mm fans and 5 more NF-P12-1300 fans in my Silverstone Temjin TJ10S. It sounds like overkill (and probably is) but with my Zalman fan controller I can reduce the noise to an acceptable level. One thing you want to be careful about, though, is clearance for RAM when running a big ol’ honkin’ cooler. I have G.Skill Ripjaws with pretty big heatsinks and could barely fit the first one into the second slot. Thankfully, I went with a 3x4 set so I didn’t need the first slot. Definately wouldn’t have been usable. Also, this case is huge and I could barely slide the removable motherboard tray in with the cooler installed. However, things sure stay nice and cool.
-
Not an expert here but I would say the faster the better. Just make sure the voltage matches your motherboard specs.
-
A gaming / DAW machine ? OK. I’m not a gamer but I installed an NVIDIA GTX 460 just so I had something cool to look at through my clear side panel (and I might want to get into some CAD/CAM work before too long). No issues so far. Think about what you might want to use adjacent PCIe slots for, though, if you go for a big graphics card. Also, don’t be stingy on your power supply. I have a Corsair AX850 that seems to be working just fine. Modular and comes with most cables you should need.
Just thought I’d join in the fun. I know I spent countless hours researching before taking the plunge and ordering parts for my build. Thankfully everything turned out great. I was really close to ordering from ADK and knowing I was getting something that would work right out of the box, but I’m always up for an adventure.
One more thing - Gigabyte’s BIOS is pretty involved (in a good way) so if you don’t have much experience in that area you might need some assistance for initial setup.
OK, I’m done already. 