Some ups and downs with the assembly, mainly due to not doing it in a decade and a lot of things changing.
Initial parts reactions:
Case: Power supply on the bottom, that's new. *thinking* but that makes sense, opens the top for an exhaust fan
Motherboard: Talk about a lot of heat sinks
CPU: Hmmm, no pins. Definitely a good thing. LOVE the new heatsink/fan mounting system. Beats the crap out of that old flexible metal bar that went over the heatsink that you could never seem to get the angle on to clip it in place.
RAM: My RAM has heatsinks
Video card: O.M.F.G. The thing is a beast. The think takes two PSU connections, has two fans, good size tubing which I assume is for heatsinking.
Assembly:
Only cut myself once and scratched (but no cut) twice. Assembly was pretty straight forward. The MB manual laid out all the important bits well. Had a little problem getting the MB to line up with the mounting holes due to the ports face plate. But some adjusting and doing the screws in the right order (starting with the most troublesome hole first) fixed that right up. The front case fan used the 4 pin PSU connector but two of the pins didn't want to go in the connector. They actually ended up pushing back out. Luckily the two that stayed in are the two the fan was connected to and none of my devices use those type of connectors. So no lose.
Went to start up the computer for the first time and got nothing. Ended up pull out all the front panel connections and redoing them one by one (well at least until the power and reset worked) and it worked.
Software:
Windows 7 installed pretty quickly. However, it didn't have the drivers for the on-board LAN so had to install those from the MB CD. Once I did that everything else was peachy.
Gaming: Installed a few games, one of which made my previous PC cry like a bitch on even the lowest settings. Turned the settings up all the way and the new PC basically did a "bitch please. That's all you've got?". It is a whole new world of gaming!!!