I spent quite a long time reading the postings on this site before building my own machine from scratch. The first thing that I noticed is that everybody does things differently, there are no two machines exactly the same which is great. This means that there is plenty of scope to personalize your own machine to your own needs and yet still have an accurate and reliable result. Just keep collecting others ideas then apply the best to your own machine.
Incidentally I have had good results with the cheap Chinese driver boards (4 machines to date) they are cheap enough to be throw away items if anything goes wrong but for long term reliability, value and good back-up service the Gecko stuff takes some beating.
Take a look at my website, it may give you some ideas.
http://www.cooperman.talktalk.net/ Good fortune with your build.
Tweakie.