Special thanks to maddog for helping me conceptualize this late one night. You spent a lot of time helping me shop for the parts, and I am very glad I took your advice on every aspect. The psu is magnificent. I owe you a debt of gratitude.
After weeks of screwing around with several configurations, Its finally finished. Shockingly, everything worked perfectly the first time running. All led's included. Took me a while to get the right ATA, but it arrived today, and it all came together rather quickly and turned out quite tidy and neat inside.
Finally, I've got a respectable psu and video card, and I'm getting 120 consistent frames, even in fun server with 30 players. Moreover, my wife can have her computer back and stop blaming me for everything that goes wrong with it and all that assorted lunacy. Contrast to some of your concerns with cooling, its holding a respectable 34°-39°C temp and running totally silent, even when I push both cores at 90+% for prolonged periods. I am, however getting a slightly elevated 47°C on the video card, but at the small price of 20$, who gives a rat's ass?
Anyways, special thanks again to Maddog. I hope its what you thought it would be. I know I am pleased as punch.
Without further adieu, screenies:
You can't see it, but the upper knob has an embedded led for HD indication. Its just slotted at the bottom so it casts a little light downward to see when its working. Left knob is the power button. Middle is nothing. Right is fan speed.
Side-shot.
back.
I took this picture with no flash so you could see the power-indicator led: