Advice needed

[Thraxen]

OK, I need some advice on choosing a motherboard. My PC is getting old and I want to build a new one to save some cash and get the stuff I want. My current PC was built with the help of a friend who is far more PC savvy myself, but he now lives out of state.

Anyway, I want to have a P4 based PC. I'm not sure about using DDR SDRAM or RDRAM, so I'm open to any suggestions here. Though if I do go with a DDR board, I would like it to support speeds higher than PC2100. I'd like to have a board with built in USB 2.0 support. On board LAN would be nice, but not a necessity. Same with Firewire. I'm not planning on running RAID, so this is also not a necessity...but I'm not against having extra features by any means since I may change my mind.

Also, I plan purchasing a fast video card. Either a GF4 Ti4600 based card, or holding out for the new Radeon 9700. As for audio, probably something out of the Audigy series. So integrated audio and video are not required. I do have a question relating to this though. If I do end up with a board with integrated audio and/or video, does this affect the abilty to use a separate card for either? Would you have to disable the integrated features somehow?

I hope that is enough information.

I'm also in the market for a good case w/ power supply. So any suggestions here would also be very welcome. Thanks!

 

[Kartajan]

If you want a P4, I would go with:

Asus P4B533 of your choice. Some like the -VM better, others the -E
Any P4 with 533 MHz Bus Speed.

Any onboard features that you are not using should be turned off in the BIOS.

Hope this helps...

 

[o1die]

If you're not into overclocking, you can get by with a maxtop case ($35-47 from newegg) with 350 watt power supply standard. I had no problems overclocking with it, but most people will recommend a name brand ps, such as antec, enermax, or sparkle. For the p4, I would wait for the sept 1st price cuts, when the 2.26 will drop to $200 or less. Also, by then, more sis 648 boards will be available, including the one from asus. They support usb 2.0, ata 133, and agp 8x for future upgradability.