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But I like being able to swap things in and out myself without as much trouble as an HP or DELL would entail.

Yes - getting a good case that is big and easy to work with is much more fun. I'm partial to Coolermaster cases myself.

Some upgrades, such as adding memory and more storage are easy.

But once you go for the CPU, it takes out the motherboard, RAM and power supply with it.

the largest/ heftiest/ most durable power supply available in Taiwan 5 years ago.

Power supplies are sold rather like "peak power stereo" was sold in the sixties. Most of them simply won't hold anywhere near the rated power except under wildly unrealistic conditions. They are a major cause of system instability.

How many amps does your power supply provide on the 12 volt rails? Most modern "big" rigs will need 20 or 30 amps, depending on what you do for graphics.

My current favorite power supplies are PC Power & Cooling Silverstone, and Seasonic. I choose between these vendors based on which ones have the particular specs and features I need for a particular build.

One other thing ... I don't upgrade much. I build new ones. I always keep one (well, for me, several ;) PC's running while building the next one. It's a whole lot easier to research stuff on the web and order more parts and take ones time and not feel like one just jumped out of an airplane and forgot to bring along the parachute when one has a working PC along side the one being built. One can trouble shoot easier too, by trying different combinations to isolate what's not working.

Sounds like a lot of wisdom to me.

Will run the CPU/MOTHERBOARD/POWER SUPPLY COMBO by you when I settle on what I think I can afford.

Am guessing something in the neighborhood of $300-500 for motherboard/cpu combo.

What would you recommend? I want hefty enough to handle TV videos on the machine. But mostly I word process and do some Photoshopping.

Let me see if I can answer the amps question . . . No, I can’t read anything off the power supply in it’s position.

HD ribbons are the older kind, though.

Power supply connectors are most all about an inch wide.

I used to prefer AMD just to give Intel some competition. And, at the time, the DUAL CPU was among the heftier setups.

Now, I’m happy for speed and reliability—whichever though might have a slight preference for AMD. What do you suggest?

My ATI and sound cards are all new—less than 4 months old. Shouldn’t they fit a new system?

I suppose it’s hard to say about the RAID CARD?

I ASSUME it’s still cheaper to build one’s own in terms of bang for buck?

Would likely still go that way but curious.

THANKS BIG.

VOT U TINK

about

this combo from this page?

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ 3.2GHz Socket AM2 Processor
Model #: ADX6400CZWOF
3.2GHz
90 nm Windsor
2 x 1MB L2 Cache

Price: $179.00

with:

ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe ATX AM2 Motherboard
Model #: M2N-SLI Deluxe
1000MHz Hyper Transport (2000 MT/s)
NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI MCP
4×240pin DDR2 800, Max 8GB

Price: $124.99

And is ASUS’ antipathy for Linux really a problem in running Linux on such motherboards?

THANKS TONS FOR ALL YOUR KIND BOTHER.

Do either of you like handmade stoneware mugs?