Hello everyone! I'm diving into the realm of the unknown tomorrow. I will be building a PC for the first time on my own. First, let me start with the parts that I bought that should be arriving tomorrow: Lian-Li PC-61 Case ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe Motherboard AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 1BG Corsair Valueselect RAM (2 x 512MB) WD Caviar 250GB SATA 3.0GB/sec Hard Drive Samsung Floppy Drive ASUS DVD-Burner eVGA nVIDIA 7800GT 256MB Video Card Thermaltake Silent PurePower 480w Power Supply I already have all the other intabgibles (speakers, mouse, keyboard, LCD monitor). My biggest questions are as follows: Will any of these parts bottleneck another? It's a little late in the game for me to ask seeing as how the parts have already shipped, but I'm still curious. Any useful tips when putting this together? The most important question I have is this, do I have to or is it in my best interests to update the drivers/bios immediately? I've never updated these kinds of things before, so I want a little bit of encouragement. If it is necessary, are there anythings I should know about doing so? Thanks in advance for any help/suggestions. Peace!

You have to install drivers anyway, I would use the latest available. You can download them now & have them ready for when you begin the build...just go to nVidia.com & get them (graphics & nForce). Burn em to a disk or copy to a thumbdrive. http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp The BIOS doesn't usually have to be updated unless there's a problem...it depends on what version your board ships with & what later versions "fix". If you haven't already done so, I suggest you download a copy of the manual & familiarize yourself with the board & the BIOS settings. You might also wanna do a search for reviews on your board to get an insight on any possible problems or performance tweaks. http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=15&l3=148&model=375&modelmenu=1 And I recommend benchtesting the board before going thru the hassle of installing it in the case & then finding that there's a problem.

Don't upgrade the bios unless you know it will fix a specific problem. There are different opinions on upgrading drivers. I don't believe in the old adage 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' for anything else. But I think it applies to drivers. Sorry, I do not check for private messages

Incoming $0.02: It's all good advice, but the BIOS on that board should definitely be updated to v20 or (if you have problems with 20) v18. This solves or mitigates a lot of RAM, USB and disk controller quirks. Do this before you install your operating system. If you're going to be running your OS from a striping array, use the NVRaid driver disk 1.05 from Abit's site to make your boot floppy rather than the SATARAID drivers from Nvidia's driver package. The 3700+ San Diego is a nice CPU. It should run perfectly cool with the stock heatsink & fan; I don't bother with the Cool & Quiet driver with that setup. The thermal goop on the stock AMD heatsink is quality stuff, so don't bother with buying Arctic Silver or any other bragging rights compound. Nvidia's 6.70 AMD driver package is aging, but it works fine with the AN8 series. Many people (myself included) will not install the Nvidia Storage Driver, even though it's come a long way. It's up to you. Definitely give the Network Access Manager a pass, though. The only "must install" components in Nvidia's package are the SMB and ethernet drivers, and the audio driver if you're using the AudioMax card (sounds better than the Realtek drivers to me). If you're an avid gamer or audiophile, you might want to invest in a third-party sound card. The AudioMax card might come on its own PCB, but it's nothing but an AC97 codec solution. Corsair Value Select is good RAM, but it has a few small issues with early BIOS versions on this board. My advice is to go into your BIOS DDR Config screen and change the RAM timings from AUTO to SPEED. Nothing should stop you from running 2 x 512MB sticks at rated timings and 1T. Nvidia's latest video drivers should be fine for your video card. Don't forget the dongle in the unused video PCI-e slot. Most of all, have fun. You're building a quality rig here. Ground yourself before touching any components (put one hand on the metal of your case, whatever), and don't start drinking until the fans are whirling, the speaker beeps, and you're looking at text on the display. "If it ain't broke, upgrade anyway."