Case and Mobo questions

[rahving]

Need some advice on which case and mobo is the best of the following.

Case - Which Antec case would be best in terms of reliability and ease of use? The 3800B, Sonata, or Sonata 2? About the same? I figure the 350W power supply in the Sonata would be good enough as well as the 400W.

Mobo - I'm looking for a decent easy to setup and reliable mobo that at a minimum has onboard audio, support for a pci-e video card, is socket 939 compatible, and is sata1 compatible. A halfway decent bios would be nice, although nothing extreme needed whatsoever.

The mobo would be running with an Athlon 64 3200+ Venice cpu, Kingston value ram (400Mhz), and probably a Geforce 6600LE 256MB Pci-e video card. Pretend I'm not overclocking ANYTHING on my computer. As far as price goes, nothing over $82 from newegg. The cheaper the better, of course...as long as it fits the above. Would greatly appreciate even some mobo selections from you guys in the $50-60 range that would meet the reqs.

The main reason other than the obvious that I'm asking for advice on the mobo is my current 1st build selection is the $82 (what a coincidence ) ASUS A8N-VM CSM mobo. While I'm fairly confident it would probably work good for me, if I can cut costs while retaining good enough "quality" in this area, I would.

Thanks a ton in advance, appreciate all the advice I've been given so far, especially Praetor's and gamerman's - you guys have been a great help. I believe I started out with a 2.8Ghz Intel cpu

 

[Praetor]

Which Antec case would be best in terms of reliability and ease of use? The 3800B, Sonata, or Sonata 2?

Look at it! If you can, touch it! See what works for you

About the same? I figure the 350W power supply in the Sonata would be good enough as well as the 400W.

PSU 101

Mobo - I'm looking for a decent easy to setup and reliable mobo that at a minimum has onboard audio, support for a pci-e video card, is socket 939 compatible, and is sata1 compatible. A halfway decent bios would be nice, although nothing extreme needed whatsoever.

Budget?

As far as price goes, nothing over $82 from newegg

- Chaintech VNF4 ($54.00)

 

[rahving]

Thanks for your suggestions Praetor. As far as the case goes, its not a big deal, just wanted to ask and if someone replied negatively towards one of them, I'd throw that into the pool of thoughts.

As far as the budget goes mobo wise and overall, that wasn't even really part of it. Was just looking for the cheapest mobo that has the features I wanted and was also known for reliability. Figured I might try to save as much money as possible since I'll still need another stick of 512mb ram and a keyboard I have my eye on. I actually decided on the Chaintech board per your suggestion dealing with it several days ago. Thanks again.

Btw - I want to say thanks to all of you on this board who have posted any replies to any of my threads. This forum has by far the best "support base" of any hardware forum that I've seen, let alone computer building. Kudos to you guys/gals.