Went with the MSI KT3-Ultra2 and everything worked out great! Runs like a dream and it's alot cooler than my old slot A 1gig. The only thing I dind't like about the KT3-Ultra2 is that even after I upgraded the bios to the latest version to support my XP 2400, it didn't detect the chip as a 2400, but as an 1800 still. I found that kind of odd, but after poking around the bios I ended up selecting the "load high performance defaults" and after it posted again it was detecting it as the 2400.
As for the heat sink, I went with the Thermaltake Volcano 9. It was a little pricey, I think about $27 at Newegg, but like MarkFW was saying well worth it as far as keeping the chip cool. The temp with the pc idle, is around 36-37C, and when I'm putzing around online it gets up to 40-41C. This is with the fan set to 4600rpm, I can cool it down more by cranking the fan up to 5300rpm but it gets a little loud. I definitely like the adjustable fan speed on the Volcano 9. They have a cool little thermisistor that comes with them you can stick under the cpu and have the software control the fan speed, but I didn't feel like messing around with it. The knob is just as easy to reach down and turn. My friend ended up going with the same HSF and he put the thermisistor under the chip, but after he got everything put together the system wouldn't boot. After a couple hours of testing the components by swapping them between systems we found that because the wire for the thermisistor was under the chip, the chip wasn't all the way down in the socket. We also found that unless you have a heatsink clipped on top of the chip the board won't boot either. The extra force from the clip holding the HSF on pushes the chip into the socket further. I guess it's a safety design so that you can't put a chip in without an HSF, but it would have been nice for MSI to mention it in the manual! Could have saved some time. Well I'm gonna shut up now, lol. Thanks for all the recommendations.
