HD and On-board Video Questions

[Beava22]

I am looking to do my first build. I have been doing research for about 3 weeks on it.

This is what I have decided upon:

MOBO: ASUS A8N-VM Socket 939 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 Micro ATX
CPU: AMD Athelon 64 3200+ Venice
RAM: Corsair Valueselect 184-pin SDRAM DDR 400 (PC3200)
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 80Gb SATA
Case + PSU: Whatever is on sale the day I buy the parts.
Optical Drives: Using drives from my old Comp
Floppy Drive: Using the old one as well
OS: Windows XP

I am going to use this system for internet use, downloading music, using Microsoft Office, no games. So nothing strenuous on the computer.

My two questions are:
1. I have an old HDD that has important pics and a lot of songs that I want to save. It is a Western Digital Caviar IDE hard drive with Win ME on it. Will I be able to hook this up temporarily to get the data from it after I have my new system set up?

2. In order to save money I plan on using this motherboard because it has on-board audio and video. Do you guys think that will satisfy my needs? And if not will I be able to upgrade with this board and add a decent sound card and video card in the near future?

If you think that's not going to work would the ASUS A8N5X with a cheap video card be a better idea?

[gary_hendricks]

The Asus A8N5X is pretty neat. I think compared to other PC boards on the market, it is relatively inexpensive at around $95.

[glc]

If you are not gaming, that board will fill your needs just fine. You don't need a separate video or sound card. You can upgrade later no problem. Just don't buy a case with a junk power supply. Look at the Antec Sonata II. Yes, it's no problem slaving the old drive in to get your data off. Buy a dual channel ram kit for best performance.

[gary_hendricks]

I love Antec Sonata cases.

The Sonata II case by Antec is like a German engineered car. It is obvious that much thought went into the design of this case. It's easy to open and close and getting all drives in and out of their bays (5.25" and 3.5") is a piece of cake.

The only qualm I have with this case is the ventilation system that you are supposed to use over the processor. It is slightly awkward to install and remove every time you need to get to your motherboard. I presume the tradoff in cooling makes it worth the hassle though. All in all this case is a great value.

[glc]

The reason I recommend the Sonata II is it's the lowest price case you can buy that comes with a truly good ATX 2.0 power supply. It's hard to put together a case/power supply combination for much less. I am absolutely anal when it comes to quality power supplies - I've seen too many substandard ones go poof and take out other components with it. I really like to build with Enlight cases, but their power supplies are not keeping up with today's requirements.

[Beava22]

That RAM is Dual Channel, it was 1Gb (2x512Mb). I just forgot to mention that.