HP Blackbird 002 (retail edition) upGRADE > core i7 - ADVICE?

[KaSTRAW]

Howdy all...I'm new to the forum and seemed to be a good place to get some much needed advice and/or technical help:

Currently I have a Blackbird 002 (retail edition) Core 2 Quad Q9450 and I'm looking to finally upgrade this machine in the next 2-3 months to jump into the Core-i7 series of processors. The main uses of my rig is for modeling...rendering...animation (i.e. 3ds MAX) and Photoshop work so the multi-cores of the new i7 will certainly be utilized. Right now I'm trying to keep my budget within the $1500 range and I believe I can easily accomplish this by choosing the right components.

So after doing the usual Google searches to gather information about how others have upgraded their existing Blackbirds I'm starting to distill some early thoughts on what may be the best plan of action.  

I suspect the first thing to decide (aside from budget) is the processor and after reading from a few different sites I'm starting to lean towards a Core i7-3930K...It seems like a good balance between power and price.

Next up the mother board...again after reading a wide spectrum of information/opinions/preferences I'm starting to consider Intel DX79 SI...Asus P9X79 Pro...EVGA FTW X79...or Gigabyte X79-UD3. I would probably like to get at least one SSD as my OS/Application drive so I may have to "rig" something in the case (possible drive bay solution from Icy Dock) to accommodate the additional drive since those drives have a SATA II connection.

I'm probably going to go with some flavor of nVidia video card so any suggestions on that would be welcomed. Based upon the primary use of the box I haven't decided if I'm going to implement SLI or not...on my existing machine right now I don't have it implemented so I haven't taken advantage of this functionality yet. Other things to consider are RAM (how much and brand...I'm thinking at least 16gig) and if I need a new power supply based upon motherboard and processor specifications...Again thoughts on this are welcome based upon certain factors of the motherboards and case design.

Well for now this information will at least get me started in the right direction so any thoughts...ideas...opinions...experiences that you may have to share would be most welcome.

Thanks in advance for all your time and effort in helping me with this upgrade.

[GTODave]

my opinion would be the asus board with items from corsair. corsair has a great forum for questions about your ram choices. corsair power supply (ax1200 if sli ) and ssd are also my picks. you could try to get the 1100 watt powerbird psu for your machine as it has the power supply line that will fit the hard drive backplane. not a big deal though as you can use the molex or sata plugs at the top of the backplane for power instead. also i would replace the radiator/pump with the cosair h100 since your current pump will not have the correct retention ring for the new cpu and the h100 will and should fit no problem. gtx 580 for the video card unless you want to to shell out for the 680.