UPDATE
was gonna go for sp-97, but come to think of it i wasnt going for extreme overclocking; ended up ordering THERMALRIGHT ALX-800 from svc. it took them like a whole week to ship it, but i was so glad it got here anyway. the review on a case @ silentpcreview.com indicates zalman 6500s too can fit quite snugly.
installing the h/s wasnt as hard as it seemed... luckily none of the capacitors got in the way of the heatsink. zalman 7000s will NOT fit on this board tho, according to zalman's mobo compatibility chart.
at first i paired up the h/s with an accompanied panaflo 92mm; as suck-out configuration was impossible i opted for blow-on, which later i suspected accountable for loud noise coming from the case (by causing air turbulance maybe?); i mean antec is reknowned for quite sonatas, everybody seems to love them. and antec boldly claims "Aria is the quietest PC case in the entire world." well, as much as i love this case, that is flat-out false - zalman's TNN comes to mind... anyway, i opened up the case and swapped the 92mm fan with a 80mm (panaflo as well). whoa, what difference it made! i thought common belief is larger fans = more cfm @ same noise level or less noise @ same cfm... initially i had it hooked up to 12v/ground expecting to switch to 5v/ground in case the noise level was too high, but it turned out more than acceptable for a quite computing environment.
then i got a bit more ambitious and attempted swapping the 120mm fan in the power supply. the stock fan (whose brand name eludes me) is a ok, but a panaflo replacement cant hurt i thought... you know they say those caps in PSU hold charges for quite a while and can be lethal when abused blah blah blah. what the hell, i was too anxious too wait and too lazy to get proper gear on. luckily i got away without injury of any sort. however it wasnt a walk in a park either; i shot myself in the foot by ordering 120x120x38mm fans... the PSU has just enough room for 25mm thick versions. if you will, please do yourself a favor and get 25mm ones in case you are planning on doing this mod. the fan has a 2pin connector - the one that is commonly seen on PSU fans - plus a blue/black wires which go thru a hole on the PSU and into the case alnog with the bundle of molex connectors. the wires end with 3pin connector which get plugged into mobo. no idea why they have it set up like this, could be for RPM monitoring.
one major gripe about this case is the drive cage : when cdrom drive power/ide cables are plugged in, i was unable to take the cage out to reach the inside of the case (strange aint it, putting it in with the cables wasnt that big of a deal.. am i doing soemthing wrong here?) of course there is a simple work-around : unplug the cables before dismounting the cage, altho it may get frustrating if you have to work on the mobo often.
with a closer inspecition, the manual wasnt all THAT bad. it had pretty much all the information i needed to get everything hooked up - just goes out to show how people start b!tchin without putting too much effort to find the way out.
i would say i dont care much for the way aria's faceplate looks. the buttons look real cheesy... it woulda been nice to have a little hole for optical drive bay. LED's in the front panel are mighty cool tho, my roomates here are drooling all over them
right now as we speak, i am almost done setting up the software part, took me good few hours... better make a ghost image or something before it goes bad
with the $10 off $100 coupon @ buy.com, aria could be had for about $90 shipped. its a bit on the expensive side but keep in mind it is equppied witha 8-in-reader and a slot mounted fan-blower. very nice case overall, just what i was hoping to see in the package!