Three questions...

[Orbs]

Hi. I'm kind of thinking about building a system in the not too distant, although not very near future (definately not until socket 939 becomes available, so say 3-6 months at least) but anywho, I have a few questions about building a system in general (as I've never done one before)...

1) What features in a power supply should I look for (Athlon 64 FX is my target CPU)? I'm guessing I'll want a 550 watt, as a powerful CPU, ram, vid card, sound card and using sata raid on a mobo must take up plenty of juice. Thoughts?

2) In terms of ram for an Athlon 64 FX, I know I need registered ram, but does that limit me from using the dual channel features of DDR ram? And if I use 4 sticks instead of 2 (say to get 2gb total) would that prevent me from utilizing dual channel speeds? If it does limit me, which will result in better performance, dual channel or more gb of ram?

3) I'm thinking Cooler Master Wave Master case, but I can't seem to figure out how many fans come with the case and how many you can put into it total. On new egg, it seems like total is 3 and comes with 2, but on the CM site, it seems like 5 comes with none. Any one ever purchase a CM WM case?

Thanks y'all! I'm clearly a newbie and appreciate the help.

- Jared

 

[myocardia]

As has been said many times before, in a psu (power supply), quality is more important than quantity. Assuming you won't be overclocking, an Antec TruePower 430 would be all the power you would need, no matter how many optical & hard-drives you have (two of each, anyway 😀). And the socket 939 chips won't require ECC ram, like the socket 940 chips do now. Oh, and you always want to use the fewest amount of ram sticks that you can. Two sticks is pretty much best for now, if the proc. is dual-channel capable, and 2 will be best when 939 arrives, also. The socket 754 chips (non-FX) don't require ECC ram now. And I have no idea about CoolerMaster cases, only CoolerMaster heatsinks.😉