buildin a new comp

[Everay]

ok, so right now, i got a gig of DDR333 ram, dunno if its compatable with DDR400 though, but i should be fine since most MoBos support them both, but here is the problem


1. Dont know which Mother Board to get, i want it to have at least 5 Slots for PCI cards, and support at least 4 HDDs, and go all the way up to 4Gigs of Ram. also P4 is prefered CPU, as i can get a 2.8 for around 100.

basicaly ive been looking around, and havent found a thing that suits all my tastes. so suggestions please.

[MattxMosh]

MSI 875PE NEO (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-130-452&depa=0)

I've always had good luck with MSI. I've heard good things about that particular board. They also have versions that are a bit cheaper.


ASUS P4P800 (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-131-492&depa=0)

Always a good choice for P4's.

[Everay]

the asus has built in Wi Fi?

[tbdsamman]

Yeah, you just need to buy the adaptor, the board has a plug built-in to the board.

[Rbstr]

yes/no you need to get the wifi module for it.

I realy recomend teh Asus p4p800 deluxe, great board all around, and great built in things like the bio update features, ocing for dummies, if you oc to far and it doesn't boot it will uppon the next boot revert to old settings. its great. that one there isthe newest version so it has 4 SATA slots inste4ad of mine's two. if you have every slot filled on the system(for Hd's that is, 4xSATA 3x IDE(x2 as each can have two drives) so thats 10 drives x 250gb(largest worthwile HD) and you get 2.5 terabytes possible.

it can support 4gigs of ram but anything over 1 is mucho overkill, and i would never go above 2gigs but only using 512 sticks as gig sticks have horrible timings.

yes you can use 333 and 400 but it will run at 333 speed and won't synch properly with the P4 2.8(i like this chip as well) resulting in a performance hit.

[Electrofreak]

Yeah, mixing RAM is a bad idea in general. Sometimes it works fine but will only run as the slowest stick, and other times it wont POST at all (or so I hear). Also, mixing brand names isnt the best idea as well. I think the real issue is when you have sticks with different timings installed...

edit- also, Rbstr is right. Go ahead and pack as many 512 meg sticks of RAM as you want into your mobo, but don't use 1 gig sticks of RAM. They suck pretty bad compared to 512 sticks. Also, having more than maybe 2 gigs tops is pointless. Nothing (at this point) will ever use that much RAM. Sure maybe in a few years, but you will want to have new RAM by that point anyhow. I'd suggest just getting 2x or 4x 512 meg PC3200 DDR, and make sure its brand name; basically anything but Generic. (Kingston, OCZ, Corsair, Mushkin, Geil are all good RAM manufacturers.)

[Everay]

currently i have 2 512s from Kingston which are both 2100 and 2700 mabey later ill upgrade to ddr400, but not now.

and also ill go with the Asus, thanks for the tip, because when it comes to motherboards, im lost.