Athlon64 and a free motherboard!?

I actually think this is a pretty good deal...I'd be tempted to jump on it, except that I've pretty much burned out on building PC's. This combo should give you a very nice performance boost, and anything beyond it would probably be wasted without further hardware upgrades.

PC Chips boards are pretty awful, and the K8M800 chipset isn't as good as the nForce 3, so I'd strike that board right out. Between the Gigabyte and Biostar boards, I'd probably go for the Biostar. Gigabyte is, to my memory, a better manufacturer than Biostar, but Biostar isn't a bad company either, and the Biostar motherboard has a better, faster chipset for everything that I can think of.

Now that said, it's really too bad that Gigabyte didn't spend the extra couple of dollars to add a TV output to their board, or it would make a really good and very cheap media center box.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Magic

Actually, I've got one of these, and assuming it actually works I wouldn't need to buy heatsink/fan. Of course, the reason it's not currently installed is because I couldn't get it to work in the first place so....

Ooh, those Zalmans are really nice heatsinks! If you still have the original kit that came with it, you should be able to install it on any of those motherboards without too much trouble. They use a funny mounting technique, but it's not too hard to figure out, and it's less nerve-wracking than trying to jam a fiddly metal clip down onto the CPU socket, like with most Socket A coolers.

If you have the cheap thermal goop stuff that came with the heatsink too, then you should be set. If not, you can just buy some cheap stuff from your local computer store...it'd probably be cheaper than buying from Newegg after shipping charges.

Even if you need a completely new heatsink, $50 is a pretty pessimistic price. You can buy decent heatsinks for under $20 shipped...they should be fine, since you're not trying to use a really hot chip.

There's nowhere I can't reach.