Serious computer build experience.

[XPerties]

Sounds like your school is on a router which from past experiance gives xp messanger, and remote assint major promblems.

-Chris

[Guest LouCypher]

I seem to recall there is a good "System Information" section of Motherboard Monitor 5 that will tell you who made you RAM and what speed it is. It seems I had some RAM that was labeled PC-100 rated for PC-125...

Motherboard Monitor homepage:

h**p://mbm.livewiredev.com/

[Rick]

Oh man Aaron...you are seriously restricted from the best stuff...you'll have to write up a list and go d/l everything when you get home I guess.

Even if I try to set up a .net account for msn, it won't connect to the server. I haven't seen anybody else complaining about it on here so it must not be a problem of which XP version I'm using. I'm using Sygate firewall (BTW--Chris, do you get a lot of code red attack alerts using sygate?)

Rick

[Rick]

Okay, got signed on...firewall was blocking access.

Rick

[XPerties]

Rick-

Never recieved any code red attacks. ARe you using the latest sygate version, especially made for XP? You say you got signed on, to MSN Messanger? If so give me a look up online sometime in the future!

-Chris

[Overlord]

Some mobo's you may want to check out are:

Gigabyte GA-7DXR

ABIT KG7 (several versions)

these are good OC boards and use a new chipset (760 I think)

the abit board uses all softbios switches whereas the giga board uses dips and some softbios. Both use DDR( they where designed from the ground up with that in mind)and are 2nd gen AMD based DDR boards.

Whatever mobo you pick, if you are looking at amd760 chipset boards, they all perform quite closely. So its more a matter of price and features.

P.S. they both support raid

[Rick]

I tell you that I am just stuck on the new KT266A chipset...not to be confused with the one that was released in April. I think this one is referred to as Pro or something like that. I saw a review of it on Tomshardware and it looks great but there is no list there for who plans on using this chipset in their boards. Any info on this would be greatly appreciated.

Rick

[BAH]

Aaron,

Im sure sandra soft gives all info on memory..

Here

Regards,

BAH

[Rick]

I don't think that Sandra will tell Aaron what he is asking for...the posts above tell the answer...look at the chip as I am sure Aaron has figured out by now.

Here's what I got after researching and losing sleep over which new hardware to buy.

Enlight Mid-Tower 72370X3C ATX Case 300 Watt Power Supply Bundled with an 80x80mm Case Fan--Dont' comment on P/S probs...I already know.

512MB of Crucial DDR PC2100 RAM

1.4gHz Athlon (Thunderbird) 266FSB processor

And the mobo: ECS K7S5A Socket A Motherboard w/Sound. Not one that people are raving about but Tomshardware did a complete review using this board and the SiS® 735 System Chipset. Results show that this board was right up there with the top Athlon chipsets and board proved to be stable. Great price too.

I will pull cables and other components from my current computer. Now I just have to wait for UPS to get all the parts to me!

Rick

[Guest aMb]

Rick, I would avoid the ECS motherboard. Personally I would go with a better make in the market. Number one for me at the moment has to be EPoX, they are still a smaller manufacturer, but they are becoming extremely popular due to their good stability and other features.

They are selling the new Via KT266A chipset, whcih I would personally recommend in mid-October, which is what I'll be purchasing too. It is going to be called the Epox 8KHA+, and the model before this has got high reviews at a large range of places:

http://www.vr-zone.com/reviews/ep-8kha/

http://www.amd3d.com/review/ep8kha/index.htm

Other options on the motherboard could include Abit, Asus or MSI, but personally EPoX seems to be best.

RAM and CPU is fairly straight forward, you may want to wait for the Ahtlon 4, Palomino which has rated speeds of:

XP 1500 - 1.33GHz

XP 1600 - 1.4GHz

XP 1700 - 1.47GHz

XP 1800 - 1.53GHz

I would defiantly urge towards Crucial too for RAM, and make sure to get PC2100.

For the case, I guess there are a few competitors, and I personally would not go with Enlight. Fong Kai, Antec, Coolermaster or Lian Li would be my preference for cases. Check out http://www.theoverclockingstore.co.uk for more options. I own a Juno P6, which was cheap and cheerful, which looks good, and was cheap, around £70 I think.

Oh, and for the heatsink go with TaiSol.

[Rick]

I agree with you on a lot of points and I took into consideration the fact that ECS has not always had stable mobo's but this one was benchmarked by serveral top net reviewers and recieved top ratings...value of speed for the money..which I had to consider. Bought the crucial PC2100 DDR and already got the Enlight case. Personally, I wish I had been a little more patient in picking out the case but the thing is ordered and on the way. Again, it has a high popularity and I went with the popular vote on this which may not have been the right choice. A plus for me though is that I made the decision to buy an ATI All-in-Wonder Redeon 32MB DDR video card. All is now ordered and on the way. For better or worse, I will have a new computer in about a week.

Rick