I was thinking on a new build / upgrade. Use my 200 gig sata, 430W thermaltake, Samsung IDE dvd burner, and case. Hopefully this will be an upgradable board to a quad core AMD X2 but not 100% sure if it's capable. Here's the hardware I been checking on at newegg. RAM kingston ddr2 6400 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ... Video Sapphire pci-x 2.0 16x 512mb http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ... CPU AMD 5400+ black edition http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ... Motherboard ? One that is a good quality possibly take a quad core down the road. kinda looked at a MSI K9N2GM or maybe a ASUS M3N78-EM? Know I want a nvidia northbridge. It's hard to keep up with all these new boards. If there's a really good deal on just a dual core board I'll settle for it too. I only have about $250 available to spend. Thanks for any suggestions Chad. MSI K8N Neo AMD Athlon 64 3200+ @ 2.21ghz 1GB DDR 3200 nVidia N6600 256mb video Segate 200 gig sata NEC ND-3500AG DVD R/RW

You can definitely do better on the RAM. 4GB (2 x 2GB) of Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 is only $25 after rebate. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ... Can't argue with your CPU choice...it's cheap & highly overclockable. You realize that you're have to buy a HSF separately, right? You may even wanna consider the recently released X2 7750 which is based on the Phenom. Tom's Hardware just did an article on them: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ... When it comes to the video card, you can definitely do better. The HD Radeon 3850 is right about the same price & it's a much better card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ... There's also this Radeon HD 4670: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ... Here's a board that's been getting good reviews & it offers AM3 support: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...

Yea I did forget the hsf. Don't know why they exclude them in a boxed cpu. Guess I'm thinking old school. I think OEM as no fan. What's a good cooler? I suppose the 7750 requires a hsf also? What's a AM3? Is it for DDR3 ? or will it also run a quad core if I decide to upgrade again down the line? Thanks for the info, I didn't see the corsair ram but I was looking for cheaper price. That's almost double ram for same money. May just buy now just in case. Hella deal. I don't know a lot about video cards any more but i'll take your word it's better. You didn't steer me wrong last time when I upgraded my socket A to that MSI 754 board. Heck I ended up getting 4 of those boards with 4 3200+ cpu's for myself, cousin, and friend. There all still chuggin along great! I can't believe Most of these new games require a Dual Core! Mine has all the required spec's with exception of only having 1 core. I thought this setup would be around for a long time. Probably would if I wasn't interested in some new games now. Will still make a good surf box or migrate it to my new Linux server I'm thinking on starting. MSI K8N Neo AMD Athlon 64 3200+ @ 2.21ghz 1GB DDR 3200 nVidia N6600 256mb video Segate 200 gig sata NEC ND-3500AG DVD R/RW

"Yea I did forget the hsf. Don't know why they exclude them in a boxed cpu" The Black Editions (BE) aren't actually boxed CPUs but they do come in a box...lol. For whatever reason, AMD decided not to include a HSF with any of the BE CPUs. But being that the multiplier is unlocked & these CPUs are known to be very overclockable, getting the 5400+ BE is almost like getting an X2 6000+. The 6000+ is only about $10 more, but it runs at either 89W or 125W...the 5400+ runs at just 65W. I don't know anything about X2 7750 other than what's written in the Tom's Hardware article. It's just been released & is basically a quad-core Phenom with 2 cores disabled. Here's what Gigabyte says about the AM3 support: "This motherboard supports the upcoming 45nm AMD AM3 Phenom™II series processors, delivering the great performance enchantment to system and ultimate scalability hardware expending." http://www.gigabyte.us/Products/Mot...