All of that is fine, as far as I can see. Both motherboards use the same chipset, so neither is 'better' than the other. Choose the one which has onboard features which suits your needs best.

Oh, one thing! By mid-August I'd be expecting to fit a Radeon X800 series vid card in there, as it creams the 9800 Pro by heaps! The 9800 Pro is old news nowadays!

Well, considering I'm paying for 2/3 of it and my dads paying for 1/3, the X800 (i thought they were quite a few months away from comming out) will definitely be the better choice. What will they be, about $500ish+?

Someone i just talked to told me all this, can someone kind of explain what he's talking about because my head exploded by the second line.

"for the love of GOD... why are you using Corsair ValueSelect with an Athon64?? NO NO NO! That's cheap RAM... You've got all this other badass stuff lined up and you're using cheez RAM. That's like trying to run a top fuel dragster on pump gas. My recommendation... Either some Corsair XMS3200LL, or some OCZ Platinum EB RAM. Trust me on this one, as high-latency, low-bandwith RAM is going to eat away at a lot of that kickass performance you're going to see from that system. Also, find a mobo based on the NF250GB chipset. Absolutely, unquestionably the best, highest performance, most feature-packed boards for the money right now. The GB has gigabit ethernet along with a built-in hardware firewall. Obviously it has Serial ATA and whatnot as well. Plus the 250GB has a working PCI/AGP lock if you decide you want to overclock any. So in summary, nforce3 250GB based motherboard and some low-latency RAM will give you mad headroom to expand further in the near future"

The type of RAM won't impact much on gaming performance (and you are buying all of this for games right?). The ValueSelect you picked out certainly isn't the best out there though. The low latency models suggested are top of the range, and will ensure maximum performance (however minor the increase is).

The nforce3-250 motherboard recommended by your friend is a very tasty product indeed. Excellent onboard features, and that AGP/PCI bus speed lock he was talking about will help generate a better overclock (if you ever bother with it).

I didnt really pick that ram my friend did, what do you suggest? Id like it to be 1024 not less and not more cuz I really dont think i need 2048 lol. Considering how good everything else on the computer is I don't think i'll be overclocking it. I'm pretty sure something that good has this, but it has onboard lan so I won't need to purchase an ethernet card right? I'll go look for that motherboard somewhere on the net now, nothing else to do at 12:12 a.m. heh.

Oops nevermind i thought nforce3-250 was a brand. So I found this for a 939 socket (for the processor) nforce3-250 motherboard. http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduc...128-254&depa=0
What makes it so expensive, I mean thats one of the most expensive motherboards I've ever seen.

Agreed!

You'll get a performance increase from using high quality, low latency RAM, but it won't be anywhere near as big as the price increase which accompanies it. The most important consideration when choosing RAM is that you purchase modules produced by a reputable manufacturer, rather than cheap 'generic' modules which don't even carry a Brandname sticker.

I'd also endorse the choice of an nForce3-250 chipset based motherboard over the VIA chipset motherboard. There's a slight performance improvement, and better overclocking capabilities for sure, but the most pertinent factor is that the onboard sound should be good enough to mean an add-in soundcard wouldn't be necessary!

Ok, finally, it is all decided. Order is going out late August, and you are gonna crap yourself when you check out this stuff. I cant really think of a single way to make this to better suit my needs.



Case
Thermaltake Black Xaser III Super Tower Chassis, ATX Super Tower, Large Side Windows, With 7 fans and Lock+(W0009)420W Power Supply, Model "V1420AU" -RETAIL

Motherboard
GIGABYTE "GA-K8NSNXP-939" nForce3 Ultra Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket 939 CPU

Video Card
SAPPHIRE ATI RADEON X800 PRO Video Card, 256MB GDDR3, 256-bit, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP

Processor
AMD Socket 939 Athlon 64 3500+, 2.2 GHz, 512KB L2 Cache 64-bit Processor

RAM (it had activity LED's on the card haha)
CORSAIR XMS Xtreme Memory Speed Series, Xtra-Low Latency 184-Pin 1GB(512MBx2) DDR PC-3200, Model TWINX1024-3200XLPRO

HDD
Western Digital Special Edition 120GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive, Model WD1200JB, OEM Drive Only

CD/DVD
NEC 8X Black Dual Layer DVD+/-RW Drive, Model ND-2510A BLK, OEM BULK


$1919.00 @ newegg.com (im using this 21" monitor and speaker system) but I think it'll be about $1800 in 2 months. The scariest part is going to be putting this together lol. Good thing my dad is giving me $500 to help out and picking up the router. I'm going to have to caddy for A LOT of people to make up this $1300 haha.

Looks pretty good to me!