As mentioned before... mine is a girdled 1991 360 block, 1/2 fill, with a stock cast crank, h-beams, and custom diamond pistons. Non-intercooled on E85 I've run mine at 23psi. From the ET/MPH/Weight, that is somewhere in the 850hp neighborhood at the crank when it's turned up that high. Most of the time I run it around 9.90 which is 700~750hp range since it doesn't have a cage in it.

I made around 700hp on stock rods, before putting the h-beams in it. That was with a pretty small cam though, and never went over 6K. I've heard lots of bad stories about SIR's, but never seen one break myself.

If you can't afford to replace the parts it's going to kill if it breaks a rod... better to save up for something better now then be disappointed later.

I would say if you're going for big power that you'd want to put a girdle on it. I know that you could see really strange things on the main bearings, where the main caps were moving around a lot. The girdle definitely helped that situation.

The tune needs to be pretty good to make big power without hurting stuff.

As this is your first turbo build, you should expect to break some stuff along the way if you're going to shoot for big power (especially with low-buck parts). Just make sure you're prepared financially, mentally, and have the time to go through that WHEN it happens.

The small block is a real good platform to build 600hp out of pretty easily. 700+ is pushing it, and going to get expensive unless you have a very good handle on tuning it.