[FRpilot]

mitx mobos is kind of a waste if you are going to be gaming. all the shuttle cases and full built systems are mitx based. i would stick with matx if you are going sff. if you're going with a mini, than there's no point in going matx other than cost. you might as well get a full atx board with more pcie slots. if you choose matx mini tower, you can get those cases as cheap as 25-40.

most of the sff small cube cases range from 100-200. a few i looked at were the thermaltake lan box, apevia qpack 2, and langear da box. i also considered the antec, silverstone, and lian li cases, but i didn't like the style of the antec, silverstone looked cheap at frys, and the lian li drive bays are on the side.

under newegg, filter your searches to computer hardware->computer cases->microatx desktop

other places to buy computer parts are tiger direct, microcenter, amazon, and of course frys. i bought pieces from everyone one of those retailers for my build.

i agree with s13shaka about the i5 750 for 180. it will run just as fast as a i7 930 stock for stock as far as performance goes. but i don't really think you can future proof the cpu or anything for that matter. in fact, the next intel cpu coming out in late 2011 will be a new socket, so you'll have to get a new mobo if you get the new chip and who knows, they might have pcie 3.0 by then. but a good setup you build now will last you for a good generation or two of cpu changes for general computer use. people are still running intel dual core and c2d fine.

a great sff matx mobo right now is the asus rampage 3 gene since it has usb 3.0 and sata 6.0 support. it is pretty much the asus rampage 3 extreme less the extra pci slots. i am considering getting that for my i7 930 or evga x58 classified 3 whenever that comes out, depending if i'm going to get corsair 800d case or langear da box.

computer chip speed have kind of hit a wall for the last few generations. we have been stuck at the 2-3ghz speed for a while now. manufacturers are spending their resources into making other things faster like memory bus, pci slots, ram, hdd speeds. corsair has a good video on their website why extra memory and an ssd are great upgrades to speed up your computer.

i was going to say you dont need an h50, but if you're overclocking to 4ghz, then you probably should.