Athlon question

[mikeymike]

@ T_Bone

I'd change a few things on there if I were you:

 - Seriously, go for a smaller hard drive.  Unless you want to become another statistic regarding victims of high-capacity storage hardware failures.    I'd recommend Seagate, their record is quite good recently, and they make fast, near-silent, not-over-hot drives.

 - The Matrox Parhelia isn't a very good card, except in 2D (as Matrox always is).  I'd recommend a good brand GF4 or a higher-end ATI card.

 - Have you searched the net for user's experiences with that motherboard?  A misbehaving/flaky motherboard is always a good way to ruin one's latest machine upgrade from going nicely.

 - Are you buying a new case for this machine?  I'm having untold problems with airflow because I'm using an old case with a new PSU in it.  If you're using an old case, I'd recommend getting a new one, one of the Nokia-style ones, they have very good airflow and are well-designed.

[mikeymike]

re: Matrox Parhelia 2D image quality

I agree, Matrox has a long record of excellent 2D image quality, the best in the graphics card business or very close to it.  However the GeForce 4 (I'm using a Ti4200)'s 2D image quality is I think nearly as good as other Matrox cards I've seen in action, though I'd like to get another look to compare again.  The GF4 is certainly better than the GF2 GTS I had for 2D image quality.