New (relatively) high end gaming system help

A friend wants me to build him a pretty high end system; the specs are (roughly) as follows:

EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB PCI Express Video Card with an EVGA nForce 680i SLI NVIDIA Socket 775 ATX Motherboard

OCZ Dual Channel XTC 2048MB PC5400 DDR2 667MHz Gamer Memory

Seagate / Barracuda 7200.10 / 500GB / 7200 / 16MB / Serial ATA-300 / OEM / Hard Drive

Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.0GHz / 4MB Cache / 1333MHz FSB / Conroe / Dual-Core / Socket 775 / Processor with Fan

(motherboard may change due to memory compatibility issues)

The idea is, I may end up over clocking the CPU to 3.4-3.6ghz and want to keep this sucker as cool as possible. I have suggested liquid cooling but wonder if its worth getting a case with a built in system, or if its better to get one seperate and then just retrofit a case.

can anyone offer me some advice?

Sounds like good times.

What's your budget for the case and cooling system?

Just curious why you would feel the need to overclock a screaming demon like that system?

It is fast enough to handle anything your friend can throw at it. Just wondering.

Wel basically after a lot of reading into Intel Duo Core Architechture, it became apparent that some of the output gets bottlenecked (apparently AMD doesnt have this problem) and seeing as the motherboard comes with overclocking abilities, i figured, what the hell?

Ive come up with alternative cooling idea's, including a wicked heatsink with artic silver thermal gel, and a PCI dual can card to help keep the GPU cool. Combine that with the Thermaltake Kandalf case (w/o LCS) with its 4 fans and huge space, i think itll keep the system pretty cool.

My hope is that this system will end up being upgradable. Seeing as its SLI ready, has nVidia Forceware for physics calcs, and tonns of PCI and PCIE slots, I think i accomplished my goal.

Im still considering an LCS system, but ultimately its not up to me. THe bugdet for and LCS system would be probably max $300-3500. I dont think i would add a GPU or Northbridge water block at this time, but maybe in the future.

The only bottlenecks i have ever seen in todays systems are accessing the hard drive. After i raided dual raptors i didnt have this problem. The relative slow hdd bus speed vs hi speed of todays processors is what leads me to believe its hard drive. I have ran massive benchmarks and computational tests on my dual core and have never seen any type of bottleneck issue.

But these are just my opinions from a real world system builder point of view. And as always, opinions can be wrong. Just letting you know what i see building both amd and intel systems. Nowadays it seems its a Chevy vs Ford thing.

But all in all, that seems like a screaming system. Just be careful. Take a look at a couple of sites that list the FSB vs Frequency clock. Alot of the OC'ers bottlenecks come from wrong bus speeds to the rest of the system after overclock. Good luck and have fun.

Thanks for your opinion and advice, I will definately take it into conisideration. I think my bud is going to opt out of an LCS for now, mainly because of price factor.

Dreamy sounding rig, I would so love to have one like that.

You didn't mention a PSU in the specs, hope you aren't planning to skimp much in that area considering the fortune in hardware that's going into it.