MSI, good choice! Thats a socket 754 board right?

Yup, MSI K8T NEO FIS2R Socket 754 :headbang: . This will be the second MSI / AMD Combo I built. The last was a Kt3 Ultra 2 and an Athlon XP 1700+. I have never had any problems with MSI. Intel products on the other hand :explode:

Good choice. I'm happy with my MSI K7N2 Delta ILSR. It's the one that supports the 400Mhz FSB. I love all the great features. And the board looks great.

Yeah MSI Boards sure make the interior look sweet. Beats the plain green or light brown of otherboards.

GET THAT KID AWAY FROM THAT POWERFUL MACHINE! Just think if your motherboard got cracked :explode: J/K

Anyway, sounds like an awesome setup. Just a curious question though. I know fans aren't real expensive, but when you have that many, wouldn't it be worth it to spend the little more and get water cooling for it? My friends computer is water cooled...and he says it runs cooler then he ever believed it would...and he has it overclocked pretty far.

All the fans were $50 bucks at the most. The Althlon 64 has the oversized heat spreader like the Pentium 4 and stays pretty cool. I have not yet seen the cpu rise above 38C under load. The system temp is around 25C-31C. Haven't seen it above 31C yet. Its stays really cool, and most of my fans are temp controlled to keep it cool. I wouldn't feel right about water being in the case with my valuable components. 1 leak and your screwed. Also I dont plan to do any overclocking. My 64 is darn fast now. If I made it any faster I would probalby have a heart attack.

Watercooling is risky and takes a lot of maintainence. Unless you are doing extreme overclocking, it's unnecessary.

Heres some pics of the internals I took today when I had her open:
http://images.cardomain.com/member_i...44_64_full.jpg http://images.cardomain.com/member_i...44_65_full.jpg http://images.cardomain.com/member_i...44_66_full.jpg http://images.cardomain.com/member_i...44_67_full.jpg

That cooler looks a bit small. Do the temps come out Ok?

Yeah, I haven't seen the cpu above 38C. The fan is thermo controlled so as the temp rises the fan speeds up. Plus it has a nice copper heatsink. AMD did a nice job of eqipping the retail processors with good heatsink and fan, I'm satisfied.