Proposed Specs for New PC! (Opinions Welcome)

[DigiMan]

Hey all,

this is my proposed specs for my pc, planning on building it straight after Christmas!

AMD AthlonXP 2400+ Retail
ThermalTake Volcano 7+
Arctive Silver 3
ASUS A7N8X Deluxe
Kingston 512MB DDR 2700
Western Digital 80G 8MB Cache JB Series
LiteOn LTD - 166S DVD
ATI Radeon 9500 Pro
Hitachi CML174SXW - B
Speakers Altec Lansing 2100

First question, does the 2400+ come with thermal compound?

Second, is a Volcano 7+ good enough for medicore OC?

Third, is there really that much difference to get a stick of Corsair
XMS compared to a Kingston? and anyone what latency (is that the right term?) the Kingston runs at? Coz there's quite a difference between the two in price where i live! i think i'll stick with one stick for now, or am i going to see "huge" improvement in my daily office apps and IE?

can someone also explain to me how this latency thing works, coz everyone talks about them but i don't have a clue about what they are!

Also, i've heard that nFoce 2 runs best when CPU and memory run at the same FSB. i've also heard that the new Barton would be introduced with 400 FSB. so should i get a 400mhz stick? just to be future proof?

thanks for all opinions!

[JNav89GT]

would recommend the epox varient of mobo and 2x256mb sticks to run dual channel vs 1 512mb

also I think that you should give the Corsair or OCZ PC3200 or PC3500 a nod over the PC2700

[PimpJack]

The asus is a great board for me!!! Definatley get two sticks of ram. There is a diff of about 1000 3dmarks. I would also recommend at least pc3200 because the board can do some crazy ddr speeds. its wel worth it! Hmm. the volcano is not the best but it will do the job very well. The fan is very loud at its high setting =(. I would reccomend a larger heatsink with a quiet fan.

[Bravo]

Kingmax = Dog balls.

The grip they had on the SDR market for cheap memory does not apply to DDR. There are many brands producing superior modules, most of the based on Samsung CTL 6ns PC-2700 models (TCB3), or Winbond Revision B 5ns Modules (BH-5). Finding a stick with either wont break the bank, provide better overclocking, at higher aggressive settings.

I know somebody with an original stick of PC-2100 Kingmax, lets just say the specifications are the specifications ;)