Still planning mine out, but I expect to run either firewire or usb2 from the motherboard to the front console and use that for both a dvd-rom and a 6-in-1 flash reader. I'm also thinking about going that route, or maybe sata, for the 2.5" hard disk(s) and mounting them on their own somewhere, the idea being to reduce the size of the actual case containing the mboard/cpu/ram as much as possible. I'm considering putting most of it in the back in a locker type box like the one Tone is selling.

In general, it is not a good idea to mount hard disks at anything other than 90-degree increments because they tend to be more susceptible to shocks. I've read, but haven't confirmed that a straight vertical mount is better than horizontal because in a car most shocks will be vertical and if the disk heads get thrown about vertically, being parallel to the disk media means they are less likely to scratch it.

Also, FWIW, I'm going with a outboard usb DAC like the extigy or sonice theater (been using the sonica theater at home directly connected to my amps as a test and am loving it).

And finally, for speakers, I've picked up a bunch of bohlender-graebener ribbons. The benefit of ribbons is that they are only about 10mm deep so I can mount them on the A, C and D pillars without much of a problem and they will be at ear level. But, freq response only goes down to ~500Hz and even that is pushing it because you need equalization at the lower-end to boost it there. But the benefit is that I need only worry about doing bass reinforcement in the 60-600Hz range in the regular speaker mounting positions and so I don't need to worry about getting very fancy drivers there. If you want to see the ribbons I bought, here is a link:

http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/pshow...number=264-713