I am building a new system consisting of: MSI K8N Neo4 SLI Motherboard AMD 64 3500+ MSI 6600gt Corsair Dual Channel Kit (2 512mb chips) 1 80Gb Western Digital 7200rpm hardrive My question is, what power supply should I buy for this system. It is not an overwhelming ammount of hardware, just the normal gaming system. It will be ATX 2.0, so I will need the 24 pin. Is the Thermaltake 480W enough? Also please give any opinions on the system.. RED

Does the ThermalTake 480W have a 24-pin main connector? I had a quick look at Newgg & they all appear to be 20-pin. Personally, I wouldn't go SLi or 3500+. I'd get a 3200+ Venice & nForce4 Ultra. And why get an 80GB HDD when 120's & 160's are so cheap? CompUSA currently has a WDC 160GB for $40 after rebate. Even if you don't need the added capacity, the closer to the spindle, the quicker the read... ASUS A7N8X-X Athlon XP 1800+ 8.5 x 200MHz 1024MB PC3200 2.5-3-3-7 Asus A9550GE/TD 128MB WinME/WinXP Pro SP1

Ok, about the power supply; It does come with a 20 - 24 pin attatchment, but in your opinion, do I need more power. About my setup; I am not an overclocker, so to me, your suggestions are a little behind the curve on performace. I know that you could overclock to 3500+ or maybe 3700+ speeds, but it my situation I would rather buy the 3500+ since I have the money! Also, isn't SLI future proofing it, or do you think that 2 cards is going to be unnecessary when you can just keep upgrading your one card? So, maybe I should say; for my knowledge level is this a good setup? If you still think I should go Nforce4 Ultra ( I believe these only have 1 PCI-e slot?) then I think I might consider that, because I'm not quite positive about this SLI! RED

Redneck, If you can tell the difference between a 3200 and a 3500 in real world performance, your argument would be valid. But you won't. Take that money and put it on your gfx card (a 6800 instead of 6600GT), or even CAS2 memory as opposed to CAS2.5 if you want to spend it. Even a faster SATA hard drive would make more of a performance difference. Or better yet pocket the money for a future upgrade. The reason I recommended an NF4 Ultra is it supports dual core and FX-55/57 CPU's. Next year slap a better CPU on the motherboard for next to nothing. Take a look at benchmarks, and you'll see the significant jumps in performance in Athlon 64's come when you go to models that have 1M of cache. The 3500 doesn't have 1M, so trust me, it's not worth it. Also, keep in mind that if you take for an example an Athlon 64 3200 and overclock it to 3500 GHz speed, the 3200 would perform better due to higher bus speed. Also, overclocking the Athlon 64 Venice by moderate amounts is braindead easy with exceptionally low risk. All you have to do is raise the HTT speed in the BIOS. Venice variants unofficially support 500MHz DDR HTT, but are stock at 400! My Athlon 64 3000 Venice is currently running 220HTT for a 2GHz clock (up from 1.8GHz), and runs 100% stable at a temperature of 32C with complete stock cooling all the way down to the goop/pad on the bottom. LOL, that's almost 20C cooler than my Athlon XP 2500 OC'ed to 2.2Ghz ran with a Thermaltake Volcano 12 cooler running full blast with Arctic Silver 5. With the question of SLI, Jam, you're right, but he found an SLI board for $130, so might as well get it instead of NF4 Ultra. Related to that, you could make an argument to go ahead and get a killer power supply to allow you to run SLI now in case you ever do go SLI. If you do install a second video card for SLI in the future, a 480W thermaltake won't be sufficient. If you don't, it should be fine. Personally, I don't think you're ever gonna go SLI, so spending big money on a high end power supply will probably be a waste. If you do end up needing that later, you only spent $53 on the 480W. The Thermaltake does come with an adapter, so that's covered. "Republicans in Congress are moving to ratify a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning, thus ending the Iraq insurgency."

"he found an SLI board for $130, so might as well get it instead of NF4 Ultra" I know the plain nForce4 lacks some of the features of the Ultra & SLi, but I've seen plenty of Ultra boards for $100 or less. Assuming the SLi feature will never be used anyway, does an SLi board have any performance advantage over an Ultra board? Here's a chart that compares some of the specs for the 3 chipsets: http://www17.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20041020/nforce4-03.html ASUS A7N8X-X Athlon XP 1800+ 8.5 x 200MHz 1024MB PC3200 2.5-3-3-7 Asus A9550GE/TD 128MB WinME/WinXP Pro SP1

No performance difference or feature that I'm aware of inherent to the chipset aside from SLI capability. The only Ultra boards I've seen for $100 or less are brands I don't recommend, although I haven't tried Foxconn mobos yet. "Republicans in Congress are moving to ratify a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning, thus ending the Iraq insurgency."

I know you said you don't like Chaintech...I've only used one of there boards & that was quite a while ago (KT133 chipset), but I had no probs. I'm a bit leary of ECS & Biostar, but I've read good things about Foxconn...never used one though. Of course, there's always deals to be found in neweggs refurbed section, but I realize a lot of people aren't willing to go that route. How about the DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D for $85? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813136152R ASUS A7N8X-X Athlon XP 1800+ 8.5 x 200MHz 1024MB PC3200 2.5-3-3-7 Asus A9550GE/TD 128MB WinME/WinXP Pro SP1