Optical and Hard Drive Question

1)right
2)any name brand (LG, NEC, Pioneer etc) optical will do since basicly they all the same
3)7200 will do fine.

Any blu-ray drive in a PC is going to play CDs and DVDs. You don't need a separate DVD/CD drive.

7200 RPM is fine. save your money.

PC games come on DVDs, the only reason you might need a blu-ray drive is for movies. Though given the cost you might consider it, additional capabilities.

The only noticeable performance gains in games comes during the loading of levels. I've got the older Raptor and it probably only amounts to a few seconds less to load a level. Not worth the cost difference...

Not really. You should be able to get both drives, of decent quality and meeting all your needs, for $100-$150. Newegg has a ton of really good optical drives for around $30, LG, Pioneer, Samsung are good brands.

As far as hard drives, Maxtor and Seagate seem to be fairly reliable; Western Digital's stuff has been spotty in my experience.

The one [small] advantage of having a Blu-Ray ROM drive for your PC is not only the the ability to run a HTPC but to create a backup to your portable Video Player on titles that support it (Warner's Dark City supports it, but only on Window devices, not on iPods).