I to have made the fatefull purchase of a virtualy unknown athlon xp 2900+ and the chaintech mobo from the know infamous retailer known as tigerdirect.
I have not begun my build yet, mainley because I can not make a decision on weather to stick with value ram or go with the good stuff and if I lean tword the good stuff, I then can't decide on how far to go. Until recently I have been ignorant to the variation of ram in general let alone the countless latency issues and voltage decisions and to be truthfull I barely grasp those topics now. I have been amassing componants for a while and have just about finished. I have 2 seagate sata 160's which I plan to run at raid 0, I have my OS, I have a gig of kingston value in another system that I will use if I decide the value ram route, I have a couple of 128 gforce fx cards which I will use unless I find a [content edited] of a deal on the 256 gt's anytime soon, I have a haupauge cap card, a cheap set of 5.1 speakers, a nice superflower 500 watt psu with an ample +12v rail and finally the chainteck 7njl6 mobo combo with the xp2900+:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/app...s/Se...BM-7NJL6-XP2900' ">http://www.tigerdirect.com/app...2&Sku=MBM-7NJL6-XP2900

Nothing is cut into stone yet, so I am asking for you're help and experience. I would like to know if you have any suggestions which can make things easier on me, my budget is not huge (obviously or we would be in the 64/939 section instead of the xp one) but it is flexable. I am already thinking of another mobo, specifically the asus A7V880:
http://usa.asus.com/products/m...a/a7...80/overview.htm' ">http://usa.asus.com/products/m...ta/a7v880/overview.htm
because I have no experience with chaintech and I know asus is quality stuff and easy to overclock. I also have not picked a heat sink or case.

I am looking to build a decent system for a good price, I currently run an xp2200+ and I am on my backup board which is an ECS, not the greatist but when my piece of crap abit crashed for the last time the ecs took over and I have had no problems or complaints, but it is what it is. If I get another mobo I can use the chaintech to replace my ecs, so changing the above parts is not neccesarilly a downside.
I am just trying to avoid any forseable complications. I would like to be able to overclock the system by about 10 to 15% if possible and I am relativly new to this.

So any advice or past experience you have will be much appreciated. I apologize for getting long winded, but it is usually best to include as much info as possible for the benifit oo people who's knowledge of these things far outstip my own.

Thanks in advance for all of you're help and suggestions

wedis

If your system and your backup system are both up to par and run the games you wanna run, I would hold off and save the money instead to go tords a s939 PCI-e combo. Surely the rig you have now will keep you satisfied till the end of the summer when prices are bond to be better. Why upgrade twice before you get to the 64bit platform?
Just my 2-cents worth.

I agree with the above. Hold out for a little while and wait for the bottom tier to come down, then spec out a good upgrader from 1-2 years down the road. By September, the motherboards will be good and upgradable with DDR2 RAM and the latest CPUs. Then you pick up a cheap 64 bit chip (retail of course, unless you can get a line on a good overclocker, do your homework though), some nice RAM, and a good solid board with all the features you'd want. Then a year or so later get that monster video card and then the following year get a monster CPU.

Until then, milk the system you got for a while longer or sell the works of it and trade up now. But you're best bet is to wait just a little longer and get a good starter kit with headroom.

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AMD XP-M 2500+ @ 2.2 GHz 46C max temp.
(2.4Ghz at 1.65Vcore and 51C under load)
Vantec Aeroflow V4A-7040 (tip-magentically driven fan FTW)
Antec SLK3700AMB w/ 120mm fans
Abit NF7-S
1024MB Infineon PC3200
Radeon 9600 Pro 256MB

"Do I have the words 'Please correct me everytime I speak.' tattooed on my forehead?" Ben G.