I agree that the ross pistons are loud, but they are also thicker than the JE's.
Not sure that anyone short of 700+hp will need that much metal however.
Stock rods with ARP bolts should be fine, but for a level of insurance, there are alternatives, but they are not cheap.
Eagle as noted. (Get better quality bolts.)
Crower. Never used them, but I would imagine they are good quality.
Pauter. Best there is, and why I have them in my own engine. Open your wallet and kiss a grand goodbye, but never worry about rod failure.
Some things to consider.
Forged billet rods do not have oil squirter holes in them. This helps to keep the oil where you need it. ON the rod bearing!
Forged billet rods have more material at the shoulders, where I've seen most stock rods fail. (Generally, I've seen them crack through the oil squirter hole, or twist up on the beam, then fail at the oil hole.)
First and formost, the stock bolts fail! Then everything else goes to hades quickly.
From what I've seen, the Wiesco pistons appear to have the longest skirts, and are lighter in appearance than the ROSS or JE designs.
There are other options out there of course.
I reccomend haveing your pistons coated. At the minimum, the thermal barrier coating will save your engine from detonation damage in some cases. (It did mine.)
My pistons are tri coated. (Thermal barrier, molydisulfied skirts and thermaldispersant underside.)
I have a set of ROSS pistons in 20 over, tri coated and ARP rod bolts in 6 good rods sitting on my shelf. (I really should sell this stuff one of these days.)
The pistons were in my "coatings experiment motor" that ran for 15 min. (I screwed up, and did not clean out the crank oil passeges, because I did not pull the plugs.. there was sand blasting abrasive in there, and it took out the bearings in short order. The pistons have very light scratches on the skirts, but are not dimensionally changed. I have stripped and re-coated the skirts with molydisulfied. The rings are not even broken in. If I was to build another stock bore/stroke 7M, I'd use these in a heartbeat, but I do not think I will build another 7M at this time.)
With the coatings, I reccomend a bore to piston clearance max of 4k. My current engine was bored to 3k with a tourqe plate, then honed and the result is about 3.5k of clearance.
This keeps piston slap to a minimum on the ROSS pistons, and the coatings keep the piston from expanding too much.
I have had one detonation event that broke the insulation off two spark plugs, but ZERO engine damage was caused. No piston crown pitting, no broken lands, nothing that I can see from the top of the pistons. Compression is fine. (I was passing a line of trucks, RV's and cars, and had a boost spike, and then vehicles came around the corner the other way! Could not lift, or I'd have died.)
Do coatings work? I think so. (BTW, my head is fully coated too.)
So, minimum build for 500hp.
ARP rod bolts, head studs and a good metal head gasket.
Want more insurance?
Buy good forged/billet rods and get good bolts.
Coat your pistons. Coat your head if your so inclined.
Shim your new Asin oil pump. Use ARZ's oil crossover pipe. I personally like the idea of remote filter/cooler etc, so mod your blocks so the oil comes out the NA cooler port.
Always replace your springs with comp cams BBC ones.
Use gasket maker like "The right stuff" for most of your oil seals in the engine. (Pan, front etc.) The cork shit they include in the kits is just a leak waiting to happen.
Read up on build tips posted here. There are my notes as well as some excellent tips from others who have tried many things, and found what works best. (Saves you time and money.)
There are tons of ideas, and I'm sure there will be more. (Like Nashman's oil pan mod. A very cool upgrade, and one that I would have done had I been thinking about it at the time, and seen his post before I put my last engine into the Supra.)
(Unless you really want your coatings to fail for some reason I suppose.)