I'm jealous. It sounds like its gonna be a screamer.  The ASUS board talks, I just hooked mine up (A7V333), and a female voice came out of the speakers and said: "System completed Power On Self Test.  Computer now booting from operating system."  How cool is that?  But wait, you can modify what it says!  I can make my computer sound like HAL at boot-up and still have a windows start-up sound too.  It will let you know about things like you forgot to put ram in and others.  I posted pics (of a quick mod to it) and started a review on it at: http://www.rivergodsmods.com/A7V333_Review.html
Only things I'd change are the Teac CD-RW for a Plexwriter, and the Antec PSU for an Enermax Whisper Quiet EG465P-VE.  Is the ATI 8500 an all-in-wonder?  A friend has one and loves it. (I had to be a real nit-picker to think up these alternates)