The setup sounds fine.
The Intel CPUs don't very much DIRECTLY benefit from faster RAM,
so the speed and latency of the RAM is not really very relevant to real
world application performance for most applications / games.
The INDIRECT reason to get fast MHZ rated ram is the ability to go to
higher MHZ FSB speeds and hence faster CPU overclock speeds.
The 45nm Penryn/Yorkfield/Wolfdale CPUs are absolutely great, but
the ones with FSB-1333 stock speed tend to have lower locked maximum
multipliers of x8 rather than x9 for their mainstream chips.
Hence your max. CPU speed at 400MHz = 400x8 = 3200 which is a very decent
overclock relative to the 'stock' CPU speed of 2.4-2.5GHz, but nowhere near
what the CPU can really achieve.
Thus you OC the RAM to 440 to run CPU at 440x8=3520, etc. etc. and
basically end up at a MHz that's limited by the RAM or maybe by the CPU or
motherboard depending on your particular setup.
If you bought 500 MHz (PC-8000) RAM you could run FSB 500 to get
500x8=4000 MHz CPU overclock speed if you're lucky to have a CPU
that can run at that speed with your given cooling setup and so on,
which seems to be pretty reasonably possible for the new CPUs if
early hopes / reviews are correct.
However if you look at the price difference between
PC2-6400 (400MHz stock speed) RAM and PC2-8000 (500 MHz stock speed) RAM
they cost substantially different amounts, i.e. the PC2-8000 might be $50 more
for 4GBy. Whereas the PC2-6400 Ballistix etc. very likely can run up to at
least 420 if not 440 or 450 or a bit more, so you have to ask yourself what
an extra 50-60MHz FSB (= 400-480MHz) CPU speed is really worth to you.
Chances are there are better things to spend $50+ on to speed up the PC
like a RAID-1 mirrored 2nd hard disk, installing MORE memory (4GB or 8GB),
a faster video card, etc. etc.
Since you'll have an awesomely powerful quad-core CPU which is WELL AHEAD
of the capabilities of basically any common game / application to fully utilize,
I doubt it makes any difference in performance to go with cheaper
400MHz DDR2 RAM, install 4GB (or more if you run 64 bit OS) and shoot
for a 440x8=3520 MHz or so overclock on affordable air-cooling.
If you really want to milk 4GHz out of the CPU, consider a set of RAM that's
rated to 500 MHz or at least is pretty guaranteed to OC to that level
which I'm not sure if your PC2-6400 Ballistix will or won't.
But then you may instead well want to buy a CPU with a higher multiplier
so you can get to a higher OC and not have to go to / above 500MHz
to do it.
In terms of getting cheaper RAM, $100ish for 4GB PC2-6400 CL5-5-5 RAM
seems like a great deal to me, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with
that set of Ballistix, it's very well reputed and quite fast enough to do the
job in my opinion. It's just a judgement call on how much you want to pay
for a given amount of incremental performance.
http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=T8UB2GC5&show=p
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The P5E X38 should be a fine motherboard.
I use the P5K-E and P5K-Deluxe on Q6600-G0s, and I'm pretty sure either
one of these would go up to 400 to near or over 500 MHz clock rate eith a
45nm CPU no problem, maybe the chipset heatpipes on the Deluxe are a
good investment for those kinds of near or over 500 MHz speeds.
So I'm sure yours should be even better.
I'd go with the ThermalRight Ultra 120 Extreme heatsink and a couple
of Yate-Look D12SL fans cheap from Jab-Tech for CPU cooling; you should
be able to max out the 45nm CPU on air cooling with that.
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