Any Recomendations on Additions?

[NewbieD]

Having stumble onto this site last week, I was inspired to build my own machine, and more importantly, able to inspire my wife to allow about a 1,000 on the rig. To this point I have only added ram to a desktop and a new hard drive into a laptop, so I will lean quite heavily on your instructions. Here is what I have ordered so far (and shh I went over the budget just a little, but keep that between us). I will use a monitor and speakers I already have.

Case:Antec Sonata III 500 Quiet Super Mini Tower ATX Case

PSU: plan to use included fans; this is my biggest question mark, if the included case and cpu fan will indeed work.

Motherboard: Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe Green nVIDIA Socket Am2 ATX

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 6000+ 3.0 GHz Processor

RAM: Crucial Ballistix 2GB kit (1GBx2), 240-pin DIMM, DDR2 PC2-6400 Memory and Crucial 1Gb Kit (512Mbx2) Ddr2 800 Ballistix 240-Pin`

Graphics card: eVGA e-GeForce 8800 GT 512MB DDR3 PCI-E 2.0 Graphics Card

Sound card:Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Sound Card

Hard Drive(s):2 Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 Hard drives 500 GB SATA-300 - 7200 rpm

CD/DVD: Sony DRU840A 20x Internal Dual-Layer DVD Burner

Additional Add Ons: Ultra ULT33069 MD2 5.25-Inch Media Dashboard (Black)
and a Sabrent SBT-TVFM PCI Capture Card

Everything is scheduled to arrive by the 12th, I will keep you all posted on the progress step-by-step

[The Wise Monkey]

Looks good. :)

The included fans will do a very good job, but you may want to purchase an aftermarket CPU fan if you plan to do any overclocking.

[zburns]

I just finished a similar build; differences are AMD 5600 CPU; I did not use the factory CPU fan, purchased the Zalman fan per Rob's recomendation; I also used Crucial Ballistix 4 sticks 1GB each (matched pairs) of PC2-8500 which is overkill but I wanted to play it safe on the RAM.

You might ask Wise Monkey and / Rob for their comments on your RAM choice just to be safe.

The Antec Case is superb; you will love it!! You did not mention your software. I used Vista Ultimate; downloaded Vista SP1 after loading Vista. I have not had a single hiccup with it -- appears "great". There are others on this forum, Wise Monkey included (I think), using Vista. My experience is very limited but I do feel it is the way to go!!

Rob recently posted his BIOS settings for the M2N32-SLI deluxe mobo; they will help you. zburns

[NewbieD]

Looks good. :)

The included fans will do a very good job, but you may want to purchase an aftermarket CPU fan if you plan to do any overclocking.

Thanks, I do not plan on doing any overclocking.

[NewbieD]

I also used Crucial Ballistix 4 sticks 1GB each (matched pairs) of PC2-8500 which is overkill but I wanted to play it safe on the RAM... I used Vista Ultimate; Rob recently posted his BIOS settings for the M2N32-SLI deluxe mobo; they will help you. zburns

I am planning on going with XP for now, which is why I went with the 3 GB Ram. I thought hard about the fan, but reading what he wrote, along with the case I figured I would just go with the one that it came with...