great job guys and thanks for putting in so much time and effort into this article. It has completely convinced me that the P180 is the perfect case for my next build.

As far as the board goes, get the asus a8n sli premium. Asus is a better mobo company than either msi or abit (there have been some qc issues with nforce 4 msi boards that i have read about, and asus is just better than abit). as far as the case goes, get the p180 if you can afford it, otherwise get...

I'd definately second the recent posts. I have used photoshop and premiere over gigabit ethernet with no problem. do your main storage drives over the gigabit ethernet to a fileserver in another room. for your main OS drive go one of two ways. (1)get an external SATA box and stick a raptor in there,...

the 9V battery idea probably wont work well, but you should be able to run it at 5V off the USB port.

Hellspawn:
Correct. Only Graphics cards that require more the 75W need the extra pci-e connector. the pci-e x16 slot can provide 75W on its own.

those temps aren't too bad, FAH does stress the cpu fairly well. As far as impact on your other programs goes, FAH never affects them. the client simply uses up unused cpu cycles which would normally be taken up by the system idle process, which does nothing. Even with games, you computer will run f...

the 430 is only slightly more expensive, has much more headroom, the 8 pin cpu connector and most importantly: it is the highest power model available with the quieter fan controller.

the s12 430 does have the necessary 8-pin EPS12 plug that you would need for a dual processor board. Frankly though, there isnt much reason to go dual processor when you can instead go dual core and pay less for the motherboard, ram, and chip, and get the same performance

doing a raid configuration in order to improve speed would only make sense on a system that has its SATA ports integrated into the chipset. On a board that uses an add-in controller (such as a silicon image controller) the SATA controller is usually hooked up via the PCI Bus, which can be completely...

Yah, i love that fry's is only about 15 minutes away from me. Their normal prices arent the cheapest, but they constantly run loss leader sales (like 200GB for 75 bucks or an athlon 64 and mobo for 150).

good choice with the ocz ram, its the best out there. if you need another source for it monarchcomputer.com is a great place for it, cheap and great customer service. as far as the p160 goes, its isnt the best quiet case, it really isnt quiet at all. Personally, i would take it back and either spend...

I'd agree, the sonata does look much nicer. the s12 is the updated version there are several primary differences: 1. It uses a 120mm fan, so its quieter. 2. Its has 80% effeciency (the ss is very good too, but not quite as good) 3. (This is the big one) the S12 is an ATV 2.01 power supply. so it has...

most pci-e graphics cards that require the direct connection from the power supply (the x16 slot provides 75 watts itself). Cards that do require a pci-e connector from the power supply usually come with the converter you'll need.

while i like the sonata, some people on this forum dont. depending on what your budget is it would probably be better to buy an slk-3000b ($60) or a P180 ($150) and use a seasonic s12 (you'll be fine with the 330W version, but i'd spend the extra 5 or 10 for the 380W to give yourself that extra litt...

While im a huge antec fan, if you really want quiet i'd just go for a seasonic s12. While the 430 watts version doesnt have a pci express power connector, you can always just use an adapter that converts a pair of molexes into one.

you will need to get a new video card if you do a full redo of your system. The card you have now is an AGP based card, while all Nforce4 boards use PCI-express. You could avoid this by using an nforce3 board, but all the new features really make the nforce4 board a bettter choice.

I've got one of the new western digitals and it is basically silent. in my slk-3000b using the standard mounting system and AAM. Not too mention that its only $150 for 320GB @ monarchcomputer.com (woo, less than $.50 per gig).

i don't see what all the fuss is about, just install a few of http://www.emerybuilt.com/20kw.jpg in your basement

mmmmmmmm, one of those would be nice. Not only would you not lose your ram drive, but you could keep folding when all the other teams couldn't.

celeron performance is very poor because of the architecture employed by intel. Even with the difference in the 'M' version, it is still not up to the standards of pentium M's or even athlon xp's.

the xp-120 will cool any processor you put it on without very much trouble (outside of massivly overclocked machines. I believe it is Ed who even cools his Athlon 64 passivly using an XP-120. As far as it blocking DIMM 1, i believe that it is tall enough to give enough clearance for it, although i g...

I have never had a problem with and Corsair sticks i have used and also i usually find it better to use 2 sticks instead of 4 (i know some boards and chispsets can get finicky with 4 sticks installed. Given all that, i'd say just get the new value sticks.

actually the 3 fans included with the p180 (and all the new antec cases) are their new "tricool" fans which can be set to 3 different speeds via a switch on the fan. At their lowest setting they are fairly quiet while still pushing a decent amount of air. There is a review of them on page 4 of the S...

The one thing i would reconsider in your system is the choice of motherboard. I believe that a passive northbridge system like that relies at least partly on the airflow generated by the cpu fan. It would probably be a better idea to simply include the northbridge in the water cooling loop.

I agree with Shadowknight. I think the bigger problem is in the Graphics arena rather than processors. Especially since laptops are becoming more popular (last month was the first time ever that laptops outsold desktops) AMD and Intel have no choice but to produce more efficient chips. Graphics card...

For memory just get as much as you can for as little as you can, but make sure its from a good vendor. (OCZ and Corsair are basically the only two brands i'll use but keep in mind that everybody has their favorite so you'll probably get recommendations of at least 10 brands.) As far as the motherboa...

the black and blue wire is simply for rpm monitoring. the blue wire is for rpm, the black is a ground. on a normal fan you will see there is another wire (usually red) in the middle. It is that red wire that actually draws the 12V (or whatever voltage it may be) power for the fan. The Fans in the An...

Yah, i did a quick froogle search and many places seem to have it in stock.

it usually is because of the hard drive. Using a Ram Drive will dramatically increase certain parts of the bootup, such as the part where you see a black screen with the windows xp logo. Also, when opening windows and menus and such in xp, anything that requires drive access, you will see a speed bo...

hehe, sorry about that. I was referring to the crippled ms version.

xp lite is only available in certain countries (the US not included). Also it takes away so much functionality. For one, you can't use a network connection besides dial up internet; 2) you can't run more than 3 programs; and even more restricitons like these.