Right, I suppose I should do a follow-up with everything.
Story Time
You may have noticed I went for the GTX 680 instead of the 670. Here's why:
I was going though the hassle with my bank and NCIX as I mentioned in my last post, but we finally got it sorted out and everything got verified. Well, NCIX still tells me that the GTX 670 is out of stock, but they would have it the following Monday... Even though the site listing still said the card was in stock. Fine, whatever; I could wait.
Well, it rolls around to the following Wednesday with no update. I checked their site, and now the card is out-of-stock. And wouldn't you know it, Newegg had the exact same card in stock! Now, it was too late to call them for the day, so I waited until Thursday to see what was up with my order.
The guy at NCIX said they were still waiting on the GPU, and asked if I wanted to have my other parts shipped now and the GPU shipped when it came in. I asked if it would be possible to get the GPU refunded instead (because I planned to buy it on Newegg now that it was in-stock there), and he said it was no problem (and it wasn't!). Well, I go back to Newegg, and the card had sold out within that hour! Unbelievable! But, interestingly enough, the GTX 680 version of the card I wanted came in stock at some point earlier that day, and so I naturally said fuck it and bought that instead.
I've heard of worse reasons for getting an upgrade.
The motherboard is pretty cool; it's super easy to overclock things in the BIOS. Funny enough, I have a ton of USB 3.0 ports, which sounds awesome, but I've been having some problems with non-USB3 devices in those ports. There are enough USB2 ports for those peripherals, anyway.
I overclocked my CPU to 4.0GHz as per the plan. It's idling just below 30C at the moment, and hasn't run much hotter than the low 40's from normal use thus far. So the 212+ is working pretty well. The cooler kinda loud at 100%, but it's normally running at half that speed, which is pretty quiet. It also barely fit next to my RAM (though I could have just put the fan at an offset to clear over the RAM if there wasn't enough space).
I'm using about 2GB of RAM at the moment, but I don't have SQL Server installed, nor have I run Visual Studio yet; I'm still breaking it in as far as software goes. Still, I can't really imagine myself using more than 5-6GB for a good while, unless I decide to take my work home with me one day.
The GPU is kicking ass. I've thrown a few games at it on the highest settings (Skyrim, SC2, Singularity), and it laughs at my attempts to bog it down. It also runs really cool (highest temperature on SC2 with max everything was 55C).
I'm loving the case so far. I find it awesome that the panel is on the top of the case, because my case sits low to the ground and it's more convenient to just have everything in a lazy arm's reach. Putting flash drives in the USB ports feels a little awkward, though. And yes, the free case I got is pretty cheap and has sharp edges on the inside where holes were drilled. I haven't done anything with it yet. There's also a ton of space; my cooler fit easily inside it. The cable management is pretty good (barely got the CPU cable to reach, though, but that was because I had kind of a short cable).
As for storage, I'm using about 100GB, all on my SSD. My boot times are sweet (timed it to be at 14 seconds from the point of pressing the power button to seeing the desktop loaded). Had no problems getting the M4 set up, and the HDD was good to go after a quick format.
The power supply is being all powery and supply-y. The optical drive is being all optically and drivey.
The monitors cover my entire desk (but I have a pretty small desk). I have them going through DVI to the GPU, and the quality is excellent (particularly the color quality). The dual setup was basically done for me after installing my graphics driver.
The mouse is pretty sweet, too. I had a mouse with a DPI adjuster before, but it never worked very well. With this one, I can definitely feel the change in DPI (and I can theoretically customize them if I install the software). One complaint I'd have about it, though, is that because the mouse wheel is tilted in an ergonomic fashion, I almost always tilt the wheel to the left or right when middle-clicking. I didn't install the software for the mouse, though, so it doesn't do any horizontal scrolling.
The headphones are alright for the price. The quality seems fine to me, though I'm not an audiophile by any means. I like that the cord is a detachable male-to-male, because I always wear out the cord on my headphones and have to buy new ones; with these, I can just replace the cord if I were so inclined.
The keyboard is all clacky and mechanically. Given the option again, I probably wouldn't put $135 down for it, but it is definitely the best keyboard I've ever used, and it's kind of fun to type on. The USB ports on the side are a life saver, because my case is to the left of my desk and my mouse cord wouldn't reach it, so I have it connected through the keyboard. I suppose I could have just moved my case if my keyboard didn't have ports, but I really like it where it is for multiple reasons.
The speakers work pretty well for me. They aren't very loud, but that's fine for me because I live in an apartment complex and can't really crank it anyway. Instead of a knob for volume control, there's a little spinner thing that sits on the desk (with a headphone/mic jack). It makes me feel like I'm a DJ with a tiny turntable when I'm adjusting my speaker volume. I haven't tried the speakers on my monitors, but I heard they're crap.
Not much I can comment on the wireless adapter. It didn't work at all in a couple USB3 ports, though it did for others. I just put it in USB2 because my internet speed sucks anyway, and there hasn't been any network impact in doing so. I don't know how well it transfers data, but it's fast enough for my apartment's 5Mb/s connection.
All-in-all, this is the best computer I've ever had or even used. Thanks for all your help, guys!