A final recommendation and a question...

[nlawalker]

Hey everyone! I'm about to go ahead and order my sister's comp tomorrow. I've just got two questions for everyone:

First:

Which one do you guys think is best for a mobo:
EPOX 8K3A KT333CE DDR333 266MHz FSB ATA133 ?

-OR-

SOLTEK SL-75DRV5 (Purple Ray) VIA KT333 ?

There's only a dollar difference. What do you guys think?

And my second question:

I've been told hard drives are easy as pie to set up, because WinXP will even format it for you. I also know that you set the CDRom and the HD on different IDE slots, and there has to be a master before a slave... and so on. My question is... what is "cable select?" I've poked around on the internet looking for answers, and I can't really seem to find any.

Edit: Also, a quick edit, if anyone sees this: what's a good brand of case fan? I just need a standard fan that doesn't scream and moves a typical amount of air.

Thanks for all the help!

Nick

[morriswindgate]

Althought the quality of the boards are equal, I kinda like the Solteks due to the layout and some of the features.
As to the IDE setting, Cable Select is where the Master/Slave Settings are determined by the cable plug the drive is plugged in to. For cable select you need an 80 conductor cable, which is what the board will come with. The cable will have blue (mother board end), Black (Master if I remember correctly) and Gray (Slave Position if I remember correctly).
And yes Xp will partition, if you want them) and format the drive in NTFS or FAT32 (your Choice). Also, unlike 98 where it was better to install cards one at a time, on XP I suggest that you install all the cards before the installation.

[Cricket]

Hi nlawalker,

Tough decision you got there...both those motherboard are very good, solid board to base a system on.

I'm partial to EPoX motherboards, but I've built systems using Soltek motherboards and found both motherboards build into nice, stable systems. Which one should you use? Either one will be a good choice. Personally, I don't care for the placement of the IDE connectors on the Soltek's, but it's a minor issue.

For case fans, I like Panaflo L1A's or Sunon Whisper series. These fans spin slower than average fans so they're pretty quiet but still move enough air for my non-overclocked systems.

Cricket

[nlawalker]

Thanks guys! Big help. I really don't know what I'd do without this board!

Nick