I'm getting itchy for a new PC for work. It needs to be reasonably fast with growing room and should last ~ 3 years. It'll run Win2K and maybe Xandros Linux.

I'm thinking about something like the following and would appreciate any comments you folks may have. The general starting point was [link|http://www.anandtech.com/|Anandtech]'s Weekly Guides.

Prices from [link|http://www.newegg.com|http://www.newegg.com]

\nAthlon64 3200+ OEM . . . . . . . . . . . .. $270\n[link|http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/socket754/k8v-d/overview.HTM|Asus K8V SE Deluxe] . . . . . . . . . . . .. $139.99\nKingmax MPXC22D-38KT3R 512MB x 2 . . . . . . $86 ea x 2\nGigabyte Radeon 9600Pro 128 MB video. . . . $137.99\nAntec SX1040B 400 W case . . . . . . . . . ..$90\nPlextor 8x DVD-RW/+RW combo . . . . . . . . $177\nLabtec Spin-75 speakers . . . . . . . . . .. $20\nHitachi 180 GB 7200 rpm 3 yr HD . . . . . . $132\nTeac Floppy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. $10\nIomega Internal Zip 250 . . . . . . . . . .. $67\nRound IDE cables, extra case fans, keyboard\n, mouse, misc., etc. . . . . . . . . . . . .$100\nWin2K or Xandros Linux 2 Deluxe. . . . . . .$136.50 or $89.\n

Total ~ $1400. + shipping.

I'm thinking of going with Asus because I've had some compatibility problems with an Abit KT7A board (it won't run an important DOS program I have under Win2k+SP2 that runs fine on other Win2k systems) and with a Soyo Dragon+ board (only one PCI slot is suitable for high speed PCI cards (e.g. SCSI or A/D multifunction boards)). Colleagues at work don't seem to have these problems with the Asus boards they've used. I've got no experience with Gigabyte motherboards.

The Kingmax RAM is approved by Asus on this motherboard and I've had no problems with the Kingmax RAM I've used.

The motherboard has a "Marvell" gigabit NIC. How do I find out whether there are Linux drivers for it? The K8V Deluxe (non-SE) has a 3com NIC and costs $24 more and is out of stock at newegg (in fact I can't find it listed at the moment).

I'm generally a fan of Matrox graphics cards and might replace the Radeon with a G550. Matrox is very good for 2D and text - things that are much more important to me than 3D. The G550 is out of stock at newegg.

I would stick with plain-old ATA rather than SATA because the Hitachi drives have a longer warranty in ATA, and the Asus board apparently doesn't explain how to hook up SATA very well. I want to be able to assemble the system and be ready to go, not have to spend a week debugging it.

I know this Athlon64 is a dead-end chip, it doesn't have the wide memory bus of the 940 pin Opterons, the FX-53 is just out, etc., but the machine is for work so it won't be getting a CPU upgrade (the most it would see is more RAM and an additional hard drive). I can't justify spending > $300 for a CPU right now.

Any recommendations, pointers or things I should worry about with such a combination?

Thanks!

Cheers,
Scott.

When you say "Shuttle boxes" I assume you mean something like [link|http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=56-101-415&depa=0|this]. $300.

I'm a big fan of minimizing heat, so I typically have lots of case fans in systems I build. I would worry that cooling with such a small enclosure would be a problem, especially with fast hard drives and a fancy video card. I'm also a fan of having lots of free bays and slots as one doesn't know how it might be used 2-3 years from now.

But I'll reconsider before making an order.

Why is the 9800 Pro video worth $70+ more than the 9600 Pro if I don't want to play games? I care most about clear text at high resolution and reasonable refresh rates (e.g. 72+ Hz at 1900 x 1440 or so on a 21" Sony).

Thanks.

Cheers,
Scott.