Finally......

finally ordered my new pc! after months of research of reviews, opinions and benchmarking! anyway, big shout out to all you people that helped me out, couldnt have done it without ya!

anyway, here it is, in all its glory
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AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (using Retail cooler, for now ;) )
Asus A8V Deluxe
Coolermaster CAV-T03 (Cavalier 3 case)
Antec NeoPower 480w
Corsair 2x512Mb PC3200 ('XLPT' those silver ones :) )
XFX GeForce 6800 GT (Doom III bundle)
Viewsonic VP201b (oh yes...)
SB Audigy 2 ZS
Creative TD7700 (7.1, with digital decoder - ive got ps2, gc, xbox :devilish: )
WD Raptor 74Gb
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 200Gb SATA
Sony DVD-ROM/CD-RW (Silver)
Sony Floppy Drive (Silver)
Logitech MX700 Optical Mouse
Logitech Media Keyboard
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well, thats all ordered from dabs and should be here by the end of the week (damn 6800gt not in stock!) but before i give in to excitement and just start building it once it gets here, i have got a few questions to ask...

1. can i run my old 120gb ide drive as well as the sata? (no raid)...... e.g. drive 1 - raptor, drive 2 - seagate, drive 3 - 120gb ide
2. would i need to add the ide after windows install (as it prefers ide drive?)
3. where should i plug in the two sata on the a8v, which controller?
4. will it really make any difference running the ide and cdrw on the same ide cable or on different ones?

thanks for all you help! hopefully my pc will beast all :rockon:

1) Yes
2) No, just make sure you press F6 at the start of windows install, add the SATA drivers and specify to install on that drive/partition
3) dunno, not looked at that board
4) Not really, but I'd put them on different ones anyway.

Wheres the option in the poll for none of the above :p

weeell, that depends on what you were gonna say lol... just say it here!

good sytem....will last you a long while, play everything and make you smile :)

Only thing I would have swapped is the mx700 for the mx1000, but thats being picky

:Oops: Where are your PCI Express slots?

Sorry, looks like a good system - I am waiting to upgrade until December when I can get hold of a board with an NForce4 on it :devilish:

ah well, after thinking rather a lot, i decided not to wait for nforce 4... ill wait until any teething problems get ironed out, maybe upgrade in 6-12 months time, get myself a new graphics card too, take full advantage of it, and after all, ill still be able to use all the other parts in my pc :devilish: