Almost done with first build ever

[rayvas]

And I want to do a sanity check here first.

Here's what I have so far:

AMD Athlon +3800 X2 Manchester
550W Ultra Power Supply
250gb Hitachi 7200 rpm 16mb SATA
ATI Radeon X1300 512 MB PCI-E
1G Kingston memory (more to come...)
Biostar GeForce 6100-M9 Motherboard
Ultra Aluminus ATX Mid-Tower

I know I went a bit cheapy on the motherboard side of the house. But, I'm confused on how my SATA will be connected. The Mobo manual is less than helpful (more helpful reading it upside down, but still won't do the trick).

I couldn't find anything about needing to install a SATA controller on my mobo. If this is the case, is it simply just plug the sata cable to the right slot and then it's good to go?

Can someone please shed some light?

[Hans Voralberg]

Well actually your mobo is quite a good one for its price and yeah just plug the sata cable in and you're good to go. There's nothing u can do bout the controller, it's either is a chip soldered onto the board or embedded in the chipset

[rayvas]

Thanks for the speedy reply Hans!

[Hans Voralberg]

No problem. Just a note, dont go panic if you cant see the HD while installing Windows, *sometimes* you needs the sata driver on the floppy disk which come with the board

[MSIC]

Everything has always been ok for me with Windows XP SP2. It just installs straight onto a SATA system as you would hope it would.
SP1 and previous needs a SATA driver, so make sure you have an SP2 disc and you arent just going to slap SP2 on afterwards.
If you havent got this, let me know.

[rayvas]

Yeah, I"ll be going with XP Pro and I have the separate service pack 2 install disk from Microsoft. I don't have a floppy installed on the machine. Never had much use for them at home. Looks like I"m going to get one just in case.

I'm an EQ2 player and was wondering if anyone know whether this is a decent system to play it on? Want to boost my graphics and load time.

[MSIC]

Regarding the windows installation, there is a great utility called nlite. It basically allows you to take a previous windows install CD, plus a service pack file, and merge them into one whole new installation CD. So you can make an SP2 disc. It's quite easy although does take a little time to make it, but very powerful. You can also add the latest hotfixes etc to that disc, and even remove various applications that you know you dont need, although i'd perhaps steer clear of that for your first try (remove too much and windows doesnt work any more! LOL). All in all it will do what you want. And it's free.

Regarding games, i wasnt going to say too much since you say that you already have bought the hardware, but the graphics card you have (X1300) is really the bottom of the pile for gaming. Ignore the fact of it having 512MB memory, an X1300 wouldnt be able to effectively use anything like that much and it's just a marketing exercise. That said, it will work, but not at higher resolutions with good effects and reliable framerates. I'd consider using it initially to see if you are happy, but otherwise considering something like a geforce 7600GS or GT (for approx £70 or £88 respectively). There is no absolute right or wrong with that though, just see if you are happy with it or not.