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Oh, by the way what's the difference between a Intel P4 550 Prescott and a Intel P4 550J Prescott (told you I was ignorant, didn't I).
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The J designates processors with
Execute Disable Bit
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does a guy have to stick with SATA optical drives if he's using SATA HDD's?
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No
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And are there any brands of ATX cases that one should lean towards or away from when trying to choose one (I don't want anything fancy, no extra lights, see through panels, etc., first build and have enough to contend with)
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No not really but I would suggest a fairly mainstream case because the front-panel connectors for some of the cheaper/more-obscure cases are a serious pain in the arse to work with
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Also, is there any advantage to going with a Full Tower (i.e. air flow efficiency) as opposed to a Mid, other than more elboe room?
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Drive capacity.l
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Asus P5GPL or Asus P5LD2 help me choose please (i.e. xtra perform. = xtra money or not)
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The P5LD2 is i945 based while the P5GPL is i915 based. The former is significantly more advanced and allows you to later upgrade to a dual core setup (which actually given the costs of your parts so far, might be somethng you may want to consider)
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1 GB. of either DDR 400 (Corsair Value Select) or DDR2 667 (OCZ Gold Series), depending on what the general opinion is on the MOBO.
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You should porbably get the DDR2 board
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moderate PCIe x 16 card (Nvidia based $200.00 - $300.00 U.S.),
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Well that specs you out for 6600GT all the way to 6800GT territory
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There are no SATA opticals that are for general public use
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I beg to differ