building a system for the first time in a while

[commierob]

hey all,
After 4 years my Mobo just died, and while I felt pretty confident building that system 4 years ago, I haven't kept up much with technology since then. So I have a few questions.

1. I used an antec 430 power supply that I bought in 2005 (my original one had a bad fan, and needed replacement). It has a 4 pin connector, but I'm not certain if its meant to be used to turn the old style 20 pin connector into a 24 pin connector, OR if it's an atx 12v.
How can I tell the difference? Are the 20 to 24 pin adapters I've seen worthwhile, or is it better to just go with a whole new power supply?

2. I did a quick rundown of prices on pricewatch and new egg, and decided on the following bits:
A. AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ Brisbane 1.9GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 Processor ?
B. BIOSTAR NF520-A2 Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce 520 MCP ATX AMD Motherboard
C. CORSAIR XMS2 512MB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory Model CM2X512A-6400
D. eVGAGeForce 7600GS 256-P2-N541-T2
(I'm reusing my old HDDs and DVD-RW)
Does anyone know of any problesm with the those or incompatability issues with them? I did a few quick searches and didn't find any problems but I thought it might be best to ask.

3. Has anything important changed and not obvious changed in the past few years that I should be aware of?

I know ATX is still the standard form factor, SATA is replacing IDE/ATA PCI-E is replacing AGP and PCI, 24-pin has replaced 20-pin, and 240 is now the new standard in Ram, but I don't want to miss anything else.

thanks,
rob

 

[stogez]

Looks good for a low end machine. You may want to check out the Intel side also. The parts are closely priced but might offer better performance since they are highly overclockable.
Get more RAM. Not sure where you got the 240mb from but the new standard is 1GB or higher. DDR2 is pretty cheap. You can easily pickup 2GB for around $75.
I'm not sure how good the 20 to 24 pin converters work.
You might also want to give a budget since it makes recommending parts a little easier.

 

[commierob]

I meant 240 pin for ram, as opposed to the old 168. I thought I listed two of the 512mb sticks but you're right I only have one shown. I plan on using 2x512mb sticks for ram.

Stability is more important to me than speed, and I probably won't run many system intensive games, so overclocking is a non-issue.

The overall budget is U$ 300, but lower is better (I'm a student).