No.  Not in the slightest.

Some slots may share lanes/resources with other devices, which can screw things up.  Some decent motherboard manufacturers (Asus) list what's shared with what in the manual.  Though, you're using Gigashyte, so you're probably back to the trial and error method.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.  I've run a HD7750 (which draws all it's power from the slot) off a 1x-16x unpowered riser.  Yet the same riser won't run a HD7770 which has it's own 6-pin power supply.

It really is "try it and see".

Or just go in to cgminer menu and do a GPU reset. 

As a GPU miner, I've given up on Slush's pool, and BTC mining in it's entirety.  I'm getting better returns from LTC mining.

Seal the room up.  Turn off the central aircon to that room. 

Get a board that covers half of the window, fit a 6" fan to that, with piping that goes below your rig.  Leave the other half of the window open.  Air being sucked in from outside will blow through the rig, be heated and exhaust out the open side of the window.  Simple.

Well, yes and no.  Asus tend to design their own board, cooling, power delivery system for their cards.  The chip is the same, but the board it's soldered to is usually very different.  Same result, but it may or may not be faster/quieter/more reliable than something like a Sapphire which is just AMD's design with a sticker on it.

Eh, it's all fun and games.  I've given up on BTC mining, I'm getting marginally better returns from LTC mining on ltcmine.ru

Chrome resizes 'OMG HUGE!' pictures by default, I think.   But, you could use GIMP on Windows.

Crossfire bridges?  All they're doing is stopping the cards flopping about.  Pointless otherwise.

I do like the Asus SABERTOOTH boards - I recently got the FX990 R2 SABERTOOTH, it's without doubt the nicest board I've ever had.  Well worth the money, and I'm glad I didn't spend the extra £100 on the Asus P8B WS as I was going to.

No, AMD (formerly ATI) make the GPU.  They sell the chips to MSI, Asus, Wang-tang China Industries, whoever, who solder the chip to a board.  It might be a board designed by AMD (IE a reference design), or some others like Asus design their own boards.

The MSI one looks like a reference design, as it has the old hair-drier fan design which is effective but loud.

It's 11C outside here today, and the room my miners are in was 29C this morning, with the windows open.  I must do something similar... 

Yeah it'll work 100%

Some people don't like running ATI and nVidia drivers together, but I've never has a problem with it.  Especially something as old as the 8600GT - Windows will have it's own driver for it, so you don't need to install all the nVidia crap.

I did use a nVidia GT610 as my "desktop" card for a while, with two ATI cards mining, but I moved to the HD7750 as the GT610's heatsink was blocking a precious slot (double slot passive cooled Gigabyte GT610).  The GT610 is just a renamed GT430, so Windows 7 has it's own drivers, no need for installing anything else.   

You can't do what you think you can do.  If you're using the Intel graphics, you can't really do much with the ATI card. CCC only works on the primary display.

Your only real option is to buy a really cheap ATI card (HD6450 or something) and pop it in another slot, disabling the Intel video completely.  Use the HD6450 to drive your display.  Though CCC only seems to work on the primary card, you will still be able to overclock etc using cgminer.

I use a HD7750 to drive my monitor, with a HD7750, HD6970 and HD5870 in the other slots.  If I want to use the computer, I just stop the HD7750 from hashing, which works a treat.  When I'm not using the computer, I let the 7750 hash.  By using the slowest card, I don't lose much when I stop it while using the PC.

Hosting?  Really?  Maybe they could ship some units first?

Same here.  I can mine LTC OK using Reaper, but BTC and LTC with cgminer is stuffed.  13.4 drivers on a fresh install of Windows 7.

Down for me this morning - miners aren't connecting, proxy isn't connecting.  I see there's maint later, but it's not 11.00UTC yet...

Any issues this morning?  My miners at home can't connect, but ones at work seem to still be working.  Web site is down in both places?

OP, you'd be better off not posting any pictures, because those ones you've put up are just plain wrong.  The computer you described won't "look similar" at all - different board, different CPU, different PUS, different and fewer GPUs....you may as well have posted a picture of a Dell Vostro...

If you spent a few more dollars on a beefier CPU, you can run a CPU miner on there too, gives you another 80kH/s (that's what I'm getting from my FX8230.  

What's the cooling going to be like?  I LTC mine in a Fractal Design Define XL R2, using a HD6970, a HD5870 and a HD7770.  I'm running 3x140mm and 2x120mm fans in the case to keep the machine between 50-60C (24C room).