text: The hard drive and the motherboard are a great match. I would definitely go with that motherboard if i could afford to redo my system. The SATA 3.0Gb/s should work at the full speed since the HD and motherboard are matched on the speed. Also as you may or may not know the case has front USB ports and audio ports and your motherboard has a front audio header on it and USB headers to connect to those front ports. But it can be tricky to get the front audio to work right. You have been warned. Why not get this Plextor PX-755SA it burns DVD'S it is  130 dollars on tigerdirect or                        \nthis one Plextor PX-712SASW-BL it is a DVD burner too they are both SATA the last one is 70 dollars on tigerdirect.Or you could get this one  \nNEC ND3550A it is IDE and it burns DVD and it is 40 dollars at tigerdirect.Or this Liteon 52x Black CD-ROM OEM Drive 15 dollars at tigerdirect. Since all of the parts i mentioned are black they would look great with the black case. The case you picked looks very good. Yes the CD-ROM you picked should work. You will have more than enough room for all the drives you will be installing in the case. Yes the motherboard and sound card should match. Video card and motherboard should match. Power supply should also match. Th e Zalman fan should be good. The memory should be compatible as long as you use 184-pin DDR SDRAM. And you need a keyboard, monitor and a mouse and a CPU. As far as a CPU I would recommend the AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego core it is 219 on newegg.Monitor i would go with Tyris T901DB Black 19" 8ms (Tr: 2ms + Tf: 6ms) DVI LCD Monitor - Retail it is 233 dollars on newegg. But remember a monitor is something that carries on from the old computer to the new usually so get a good one. Keyboard and mouse is user preference which ever one you like get that one. Well so is the rest of it but i can't recomend a keyboard and mouse that is your choice.