I've been doing exactly the same. I also mainly shop at Googlegear, and also Newegg.com. I live in Alaska & Googlegear's "free"
shipping is the best I've found - they only tag on $10. Amazon is the absolute best as they will ship for free to Alaska, but their
choices in this arena are quite limited.

I too kept my old case (Antec), but bought an Antec Truepower 430 from Amazon. I then went to FrontX.com and purchased the
USB/Firewire/headphone/mic box for front access. Quite cheap & they too ship free!

Good choice on memory. One note on the processor - I built two systems, one was based on the 2.8, and mine is the 3.0. The 3ghz
chip comes with a much improved heatsink/fan setup. Is that alone worth the extra $? No, but go ahead and get it. The 3.2 is
coming out so the 3.0 is much cheaper now than what it was a month ago when I bought mine.

In any case - have fun!

Steve

"John" wrote in message om...
Hi everyone,

Thanks for all the advice. I've decided to go with the following:

- Pentium 4 2.8GHz 800MHz Socket 478 Processor
- Asus P4P800
- Corsair TWINX1024-3200C2PT 1GB DDR400

I'm also looking at the Antec Sonata Quiet Mid Tower Case, however
paying $75 for shipping alone on a case is not something I want to do.
The case I have is an Antec also, and my hard drives are in an
external case (scsi), so am guessing I'll be ok power wise.

Still falling into that age old problem of when to buy. I used to buy
the latest and greatest (really want the 3GHz unit), and found that
the cost to buy something one step below the latest was considerably
cheaper, and the performace differences were not noticable. I usually
purchase from www.googlegear.com, however the prices for the above
components seem to keep dropping slightly every day. Hard to purchase
something when you know in a few hours it will be cheaper. (:

Thanks again.

JR


"G.B. Langer" wrote in message ...
John, I just finished building a similar system using the P4P800, but using
the retail (with Intel cooling) P4c2.4GB with two sticks of Kensington 256MB
memory instead. I built one other PC 7 years ago and did some minor
upgrading to it so I am by no means an expert on this. What I did do was
what you are doing now; researching and asking questions here. Excellent
advice here. I went with the non-Deluxe model because I didn't need some of
the other features of the Deluxe, but for the little expense more you might
consider it.

I went with the Kensington PC3200 because it was on the approved chart for
this board at the ASUS site. I'm sure other memory brands will work as well,
seeing here others are having great success, especially with the Corsair. As
you know you want 2 identical modules.

I went with an Antec Performance II Model SX630II ATX case. It only has a
300W power supply but all I have is a hard drive and a CD writer. Rumor is
the Antec power supplies are very conservatively rated so I feel okay with
the 300W. I could always uprgrade it if I ever had the need more later on. I
assume your old case is fine if the power supply is adequate. The board will
fit standard ATX cases. Make sure you have adequate case cooling. My case
came with 1 rear exhaust fan but I put in 2 front Antec intake fans as an
option, seeing as they were only $5 at NewEgg.com. :-)

I am extremely pleased that I chose the P4P800 and think you will too. It is
rock stable and fast with no problems whatsoever. I have pretty much
everything in the BIOS set at Default and have not experimented with
overclocking. Maybe later on I'll try some tweaking. The only difficulty I
had assembling was trying to figure out the connections for the front case
USB wires to the motherboard and the front case LED and switch wires. I got
the correct orientation here on this newsgroup quickly.

Good luck and have fun,
Beau