> .5-1GB DDR SDRam
For the Ram I recommend Crucial (www.crucial.com). They do a _very_ good price and manufacture some of the best quality Ram around. > So what do you think? Anything you would recommend I > change or add? Is there a specific type of CDRW I > should get or a specific cooling fan or something? It's quite difficult to keep an Athlon 1.4GHZ cool. On mine I have the heatsink from a GlobalWin WBK68 but the (very quiet but also not too effective) fan broke off so I replaced it with something a bit bigger. As well as that I have one fan sucking air in at the front.. and 2 blowing it out at the back. The peak temp (with my Asus A7A266 - you'll most likely get a lower but innacurate temp reading with other boards) is 64C for the CPU and 40C for the ambient temp. Yes 64C is a high temp but it's perfectly safe for the Athlon (it can supposedly handle up to 95C but will actually crash at around 75C). The ambient temp is a bit high due to my GeForce 2GTS but it still doesn't cause any problem. Something that is *extremely* important for a stable Athlon system (and something that gets overlooked by a lot of the reviewers who claim that Athlon systems are not as stable as Intel) is that your Power Supply Unit (PSU) must give very stable voltages. Athlons become very sensitive to voltage fluctuations at 1.4GHZ + (with the crap PSU I have currently my system will run at 1.4GHZ but will crash under heavy load at 1.46GHZ - but with the correct PSU will run up to 1.6GHZ stable). Check www.amd.com for details on 'Athlon approved' power supplies. A 300w PSU should be enough but in order to stay 'future-proof' I'd recommend at least 350w if not 420w as you never know how much power hungry hardware you might add to your system. Also make sure to get a PSU that is approved for a CPU specification *above* what you are going to use. (i.e make sure it is approved for the Athlon XP.. ) It seems there are a lot of questions about AMD systems on this list lately. I've replied to the ones I've seen but never received any feedback. If people are interested I'll do some kind of FAQ for the Athlon but as I've never received any feedback to my posts I don't know if it's worth it.. -dave --- Drum&Bass Arena Producers Discussion List http://www.breakbeat.co.uk You are currently subscribed to dnb-prod as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
