Excellent series, and great podcast interview to go with it.
One thing’s been bugging me, though - on the Premium machine, you went with 2x500GB drives and 2GB RAM rather than one 500GB drive and 4GB RAM. From my experience developing on Vista, 2GB RAM is pretty miserable. Why not go to 4GB on the Premium rig rather than bumping up the drive space?
Just a note: Craig Boland’s comment above is right on the mark. Adding sound-dampening foam is going to increase case temps. First, it prevents the heat of the air inside the case from being transferred through the aluminum case, as Craig mentioned. Second, by the law of conservation of energy, the acoustical energy absorbed by the foam is converted into internal energy (i.e. increase in temperature of the foam) which in turn is dissipated back into the air and components inside the case. But as long as you monitor temps and have good cooling/air flow, this shouldn’t be a problem.