I am gonna build a new system the first of the year . This will be my second diy system . I am gonna use a 64 bit athlon in this system . I am looking up motherboards and I see very little in the way of socket 64 motherboards . How much diffrince is there in a socket 64 compared to like a socket a or whatever . The case I bought{ET7890A at http://www.addtronics.com/ } a couple of months ago dos'nt mention a socket 64 but I am sure I can mod it to work .

Athlon 64s use either socket 754 or 939. No amount of modding short of re-engineering the board, including replacing the chipset, will make a Socket A motherboard support an Athlon 64. The key difference is that all AMD64 CPUs include onboard memory controllers. AMD64 CPUs don't even have an FSB in the traditional sense.

754 is the budget option and has no future. 939 supports higher performance A64s but is more expensive.

Your case will probably work. I didn't check it, but as long as it supports ATX motherboards, as nearly all standard cases do, you'll be fine. Power, however, is an issue. Your power supply should provide at least 18A at 12V, ideally 20A. Pay no attention to Wattage ratings unless your computer is full of drives and accessories, and you have a high-end video card. My 380W power supply is better than many 450W supplies because of the current it can deliver at 12V.

Just setup a AMD64 +3200 based system on a Gigabyte MB:

http://www.giga-byte.com/Motherboard/Products/Products_GA-K8NS%20Pro.htm

I was trying to get the most 'bang for the buck' as we are on a tight budget right now and the use was not for gaming but surfing and storage with webpage design, and audio editing. This MB had the features I was looking for and a reasonable price but a name brand. It seemed to have more features than the comparable ASUS (8 USB vs 6 & 3 firewire vs 2). I would have liked to get a 939 socket but it was out of the price range. We are extremely happy so far what with 3 SATA drives totalling 480 gig and 1 gig of PC3200 RAM. Expecialy since we are comparing to a P3 600. Installation went real smoothly with no problems. We used the stock CPU cooler and get between 32 and 36 C temps. The Athlon in the next room runs betwen 48 and 55 with a Thermaltake dual fan cooler! We set it up last Wednesday and its been running 24/7 since then with the only boots for installation of software. We are running XP Pro SP2 along with Nortons IS 2004 which came with the MB.

I'd certainly go this way again re the motherboard. The Nividia nForce 3 250 chipset seems to be a winner.

IMHO Gigabyte has a good product and at present slightly better than ASUS.

Cheers

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference." Frost

"The Nividia nForce 3 250 chipset seems to be a winner."

I agree. It's great for overclocking too. My A64 2800 runs at 2.4GHz with stock HS&F in my Chaintech VNF3-250 thanks to the nF3 250's PCI/AGP lock.