First of all stay away from that hitachi hard drive. It is crap. I rma two in a row and finally just got a refund. Spend a couple more dollars and get a western digital, seagate, or maxtor. One of the drives would not detect. The other worked for one day and all data and the partition was corrupted and the hitachi diagnostics said it was defective due to excessive shock. If your staying with 7200 rpm drives you can just get a pata drives instead. It would run the same speed, the only advantage which is a good advantage is that the cables are smaller. If you get a sata drive just remember you will need drivers from your motherboard Cd onto a floppy disk before installing windows.

 

Otherwise everything looking good. As Mac suggested if you going with Nvidia 6800 get the GT model even if it doesn't have the fancy aftermarket cooler on it.

 

If going with A64 get the Nforce3 250gb chipset as Mac suggested. If you want to overclock in the future make sure the board has an agp/pci lock which I believe all the boards with the chipset recommended does.

Thanks for all the info Creep! What drivers do you have to move? Although you said the mobo drivers, What if they already come on a floppy? Thanks.

I have never heard of a mobo manufacturer put them on floppy for you. So don't count on it. You will need to consult the manual to help in explaining the method in doing this as it may vary with manufacturers. Basically they are either called storage drive drivers or raid drivers. Depending on the mobo, sometimes there are two controllers for sata. For example on my motherboard I have a Promise raid controller with two sata ports that support Raid 0 & 1. It also has a Via raid controller with two sata ports that support Raid 0 & 1 & 0+1. If your board has more than one controller make sure that the drivers extracted to the floppy disk is for that controller. It's good to have another working computer nearby with an OS installed so that you can make the driver floppy.

I have never heard of a mobo manufacturer put them on floppy for you. So don't count on it. You will need to consult the manual to help in explaining the method in doing this as it may vary with manufacturers. Basically they are either called storage drive drivers or raid drivers. Depending on the mobo, sometimes there are two controllers for sata. For example on my motherboard I have a Promise raid controller with two sata ports that support Raid 0 & 1. It also has a Via raid controller with two sata ports that support Raid 0 & 1 & 0+1. If your board has more than one controller make sure that the drivers extracted to the floppy disk is for that controller. It's good to have another working computer nearby with an OS installed so that you can make the driver floppy.

Oh just remembered that some A64 systems are picky when it comes to brand choice of memory. I would get a brand that is recommended by the mobo manufacturer.

 

On the left hand side of this web page will show you supported memory for this board. Note that Geil memory is not recommended although that doesn't mean it won't work. It just means that they haven't tested it.

http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=K8N_Neo_Platinum&class=mb

Oh just remembered that some A64 systems are picky when it comes to brand choice of memory. I would get a brand that is recommended by the mobo manufacturer.

 

On the left hand side of this web page will show you supported memory for this board. Note that Geil memory is not recommended although that doesn't mean it won't work. It just means that they haven't tested it.

http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=K8N_Neo_Platinum&class=mb

Sam I only see one problem really right now. I strongly suggest finding the 1MB cache rather than the 512K cache you currently have picked out. As it stands now you would be running about the same as an Athlon XP 3200. The cost is about the same, but they have been out on newegg lately. Check ZipZoomFly.com . I always like the Maxtor and Seagate drives but I have the one you listed and it is a good drive for someone on a budget.

Sam I only see one problem really right now. I strongly suggest finding the 1MB cache rather than the 512K cache you currently have picked out. As it stands now you would be running about the same as an Athlon XP 3200. The cost is about the same, but they have been out on newegg lately. Check ZipZoomFly.com . I always like the Maxtor and Seagate drives but I have the one you listed and it is a good drive for someone on a budget.

Those cost too much Statie.

Those cost too much Statie.