Gary,
While writing my comments I thought it might be better to post this in the open here instead of by PM, so others can benefit as well.
Anyway here are my remarks.
Videoguys' DIY9 Article
I promised you I would get back to you on your planned article with some of my thoughts on the Sandy Bridge-E and the X79 platform.
First of all, while the X79 is a huge step forward, it still is disappointing that Intel did not keep their promises and dumbed down the platform, by leaving out a large number of SATA and SATA6 ports, by skipping the SRT support that makes the Z68 platform so nice, and by not supporting PCIe-3.0. All rather disappointing, because it means that mobo manufacturers have to rely on third party chips to increase the functionality of their designs.
In the second place the i7-3930K and i7-3960X have only 6 cores active. Actually 2 cores are just turned off, otherwise we would have octo cores by now and to make matters worse, of the 20 MB L3 cache on the chip, only 12 MB is used on the 3930K and 15 MB on the 3960X.
For all these limitations I expect a solution in the future. How long that will take, I have no idea, but I do expect a new top model CPU with 8 cores enabled and with the full complement (20 MB) of L3 cache enabled, possibly called the i7-3980X. In addition, I expect an updated X79-a chipset that has more SATA ports and that has SRT and PCIe-3.0 support. Mind you, this is pure speculation from my side.
I'm telling you this not because I have inside knowledge, which I don't have, but because it makes sense for Intel, but then it also means that you may have to revise the DIY guide in the next couple of months.
Now that we have some background thoughts out of the way, let's go over your shopping list.
I understand that usually you suggest systems that are not as expensive as this one, so I'm going to suggest some alternatives to keep the cost down but still have a great performance increase over an i7-2700 / Z68 system.
Going down your list, the first point of criticism is the RAM. With the low prices of RAM today it makes no sense to limit yourself to only 4 sticks and 16 GB. Go for at least 32 GB (8 x 4 GB). Even on a i7-2700 system there is an appreciable performance gain by going from 16 to 32 GB. Unfortunately on a Z68 you have to revert to costly 8 GB sticks, but on the X79 platform you have 8 memory slots, so you can use the affordable RipjawsZ you chose.
For the boot drive I would personally skip the Crucial and save some money by going for a Samsung Spinpoint 320 G F4 disk. It is very fast, but way less expensive than the Crucial SSD, even at todays inflated disk prices. The POST sequence takes so much time on a decent system, and especially with all the memory and spinning up the video storage disks, that the gain of an SSD is only marginal. Furthermore SSD's still have significant write deterioration after some time of use and the trim function does not really help. See also Adobe Forums: The SSD myth unraveled
Next point, video storage. The major drawback of the Sandy Bridge platform is the limitation of 16 PCIe lanes. Now with the X79 platform we have 40 PCIe lanes, so there is absolutely no argument not to use some of those available lanes for an internal dedicated raid controller. Areca told me that they expect to introduce a PCIe-3.0 line of raid controllers in H1/2012 and the same probably applies to LSI. But even with todays models like the Areca ARC-1880iX one can easily achieve sustained transfer rates that exceed 1000 MB/s with only 8 disks in a raid array. That is way faster than the external G-Tech Raid solution over eSATA. If you still want to use external raid arrays, then connect them over a 8088 or 8087 multilane connection, not over eSATA, which seriously degrades transfer rates.
The case. Too small and too cramped. Instead consider the Antec 1200 or the CoolerMaster HAF932. Both big towers, but with lots more internal space, making for easier installation, better cable management and better cooling, more expansion capabilities and more video card options, due to the length of these cards. My personal favorite is the Lian Li PC-A77, but that is probably too expensive for this article.
The Power Supply. One of the components that usually take a back seat in terms of priority and is often overlooked as being absolutely crucial for reliable performance. IMO the only PSU to consider is a 80+ Gold label PSU, so in the case of Corsair not the TX line, but only the AX line. But also, do not skimp on the rated power. It is often better to have extra power, because then the fan will run slower, lowering the noise level. A very nice tool in this area is eXtreme Power Supply Calculator Pro v2.5 and when you get the Pro version, you enter all your components and possibly the overclock speed, then set your CPU load to 100% and the capacitor aging to 30%. Finally add 10 - 15% to the calculated wattage for safety. Not only do you know the required wattage of the PSU, but also the amperages on the different rails and that is overlooked even more often.
Finally the GPU. IMO the Quadro 4000 is way overpriced. It has only 256 cores, only 2 GB VRAM and a 256 bit bus and the only advantage is the 10 bit color depth, but how many have an expensive HP Dreamcolor monitor to take advantage of that color depth? A GTX 580 with 3 GB VRAM is way more affordable, has double the cores and uses a 384 bit memory bus. The Quadro is outclassed on every aspect for an outrageous price.
To summarize, you have to use the X79 platform not like a newer Z68 platform, but as a higher level platform and that means taking advantage of all the memory slots, all the PCIe lanes by using a dedicated raid controller internally with a large number of disks, requiring a big tower and possibly two video cards for 3 or 4 monitor setup.
I hope this helps.