Yes. Yes, you can. I have in my older (WinXP rig) 3 hard drives of various capacities and an otpical drive. In my newer (Win7) rig, I have an SSD, 2 hard drives, and an optical drive. If your mobo has the ports, you can use them. Just be sure you know which SATA port is port 0 (zero) and use that one for your OS drive.

Yeah, I already ran the Newegg wattage calculator, and with the additional optical drive I purchased today, I'm still under the PSU I purchased for this system (850W Corsair).

But I am close enough to be a little worried. At some point I may buy a larger PSU. And if I do I sure hope the being fully modular means that changing it will only mean unplugging from the current PSU, taking it out, and plugging it back into the new PSU. It should work that way, at least it should if I purchase the same brand (which I would do, IMO Corsair makes very good PSU's).

And I have PLENTY of space in my case lol. I overdid I think on the case, but dammit I just liked the way that thing looked lol. Same with my motherboard. I probably overspent by $100 on the motherboard just cause of the way it looked. Yeah, I'm an idiot. Well, it wasn't JUST that. It does have one feature most of the other LGA 1155's with the Z77 chipset don't have, and that's TWO 16X 3.0 PCIe slots. Almost all of the other MB had two PCIe slots, but if both were filled it was usually 1 being 16X and 2 being 8X. This one has two and even when both are full it will be fully 16X PCIe 3.0. So, the way it looked and that got me on the motherboard. I really think those are the only two areas I overspent on.

Unless one wants to say I overspent on two graphics cards. I've now had a taste of things running in SLI mode, and have seen first hand that it makes a HUGE difference in performance (performance meaning FPS in games). Almost literally doubled FPS. So, I got two Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 ti's (I just couldn't afford the 680. The two 560 ti's were cheaper than 1 680). I'm pretty sure those are the only areas one could claim I overspent. And I would disagree with them on the two graphics card thing, cause I have seen how much of a performance boost you get running in SLI and IMO that's now important to me.
Ugh, okay, first really dumb question. I swear I read the MB manual front to back (and got lost in the BIOS stuff) but I don't remember it telling me which SATA port was port 0. How do I find that out??

Should be in the manual, or numbered on the motherboard itself. What's your board's brand and model?

Space on the case may help with the airflow for cooling, so best to have empty spaces than crammed ones. As for "overspending" on the motherboard, since you are using both PCIe, it's not overspending, if you had them but didn't use them, then it would be overspending.
As for your previous comment on Windows, are you talking about this video? If yes, give me 50 mins and I'll probably be able to answer any questions you have, assuming I recall the installation process :P

it's usually printed next to them otherwise as you look at them its (usually) the one on the left closest to the edge (if they stack vertically it's the bottom one)

Yeah, sounds like you might have overdone it a bit. Not that I'm having a go. My case has enough space for 9 hard drives and three optical drives. Not to mention the fact that it is capable of housing server motherboards.

My excuse is the same as yours. I liked the look of it. A lot.

You may be able to answer it without watching, but yes, that's the video. I'm confused on the very first part after you put your Windows disc in the optical drive, turn it on, and have it come boot up off that drive to install Windows.

It looks like he's partitioning the hard drive, but it sounds like he's saying he's not partitioning the hard drive. I couldn't make sense of what he was saying. And while I've installed OS before, the last time was Windows 95 lol. So I'm not sure if there is some sort of requirement to partition the hard drive or not. And can you even partition an SSD???

I dunno, I'm so confused on that part and I've watch that little secion of that video plenty of times to tell me it doesn't matter how many times I watch it I'll still be confused.
Well, I'm looking at the invoice right now. And it says:

ECS Golden Z77H2-AX(1.0) LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard.

Does that help?? lol, I can't remember what the brand name was (Elite something or other) and my empty box is buried at the bottom of the big box with LOTS of other empty boxes on top of it. And for some reason, I'm not finding the manual right now, which worries me more than the box being buried. lol

EDIT: Ahh, whew, found the manual. The brand is [Elite Group] lol, the manual was in.... the... err... ahm.... reading room! That's a good name for it. Right?? lol. I've gotten so I can't even go if I don't have something to read. lol

You did hear correctly. He is showing the way to partition the drive, though he is only keeping one partition. You can have quite a number of partitions (4 was the old limit, I think you can have more now, but you don't really need it).
Any disk can be partitioned (ok, a floppy disk may not be partitionable), but main reason to partition it is because you know that you may need to clean one of the partitions (System partition and Data partition, if you need to reinstall the OS, you scrap the System partition while keeping the data).
Assuming you have 2 disks, instead of partitions, use the disks, and don't worry about partitions.
P.S. As before, I am writing these posts at about midnight local time, so be aware that my explanations may not be that good. Will try to clear up any confusions, though I'll probably get ninja'd in the meantime.

Well THANK YOU very much. Don't stay up on my account!! lol

So, if I want to put apps on my SSD, in addition to the OS, I should partitition some amount for the OS??? Is that what he's saying?? Does windows do that automatically or do I have to figure out the right amount of space to allocate to the OS partition?

Again, sorry for these really dumb questions, but these are the kinds of little things that videos like that almost never fully address and I'm, well, clueless. lol

Imho, only dumb questions are those that aren't asked, assumptions will usually lead to problems.
So, in the video, while he isn't partitioning the hard drive, Windows will automatically add a miniscule partition (~100MB) as "System Reserved". Ignore it, and write it off as an OS requirement. By default, Windows should have allocated the max amount of space your HDD has on one partition, then it will add the System Reserved one. No need to figure out capacities.
And I'm currently chatting with a few more people, not yet bedtime ;)

Nice! Yeah, having the LEDs match up does make a difference. Mine is attached.

Those fans are 120mm and behind each you can fit 3 hard drives. I've got... 2 in there.

I have no idea about computers, but I have another favourite quote:

"There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers"

Ugh, if $79.99 is over doing, then I'm too embarrassed to show the one I picked.

Ahh, fuck it, so I'm a moron. Not alone in that category lol. But I did like the way it looked on the web page, and now that I have it physically here, I actually like it even better. Of course, it will look waaaaaayyyyyyyyy better once it's not, you know, empty.... lol

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119213&Tpk=cooler%20master%20haf%20932%20advanced%20blue%20edition%20rc-932

OFG, that's the case I went with for my Win7 build. Great case with lots of room to work.

Did you figure out which SATA port is port 0?