Just FYI, you can make a functional system for way less than 7k. I pieces together my system for a little over 2k, and I could have gone cheaper for some of my parts. I probably spent around 1.3k on parts from Raptor themselves. (the prices have increased since then but the point remains)
Happy user of RCS Talos II and Blackbird for several years here. It really does live up to all the hype. There's also a very close knit community of users and an IRC channel (#talos-workstation on Freenode) if you want to drop by and chat. :)
