Recently began putting together a pretty sweet gaming comp. and i want to make it as close to top of the line i can make it.
So far this is what i have...

Motherboard-A8n-Sli premium
CPU- AMD Athalon 4400 64 2x
Graphics Card-Geforce 7800GTX OC
Hard D- Seagate 250 barracuda Serial-ATAI

I actually have a few questions on what i should buy...

1. Cdrom/burner
2. Dvd player/burner
3. RAM
4. Most importantly and the most confusing for me is what exterior power source - as far as wattage and quality goes. Also decent looking...mirror finnish or something like that.
5. I bought a case from Sunbeam Tech. of the clear uv resp. variety...the features of the case seem to have no place for plugging onto the motherboard am i supposed to find adaptors or what?

Any Help is greatly appreciated considering im sitting here using a laptop that would better suit me as a boat anchor. Not to mention i am also staring at my partially assembled beast house computer scratching my head. Actually come to think of it im sure i could sell my laptop to a museum as it has begun to fossilize.

Well I would have got a different board but each too there own, as for an external power supply. I dont understand why? You never use it other then to turn the Rig on so hide it in the case.

MSI K8N Neo nForce 4 Sli Diamond/DFI LAN PARTY
PSu Enermax NosieTaker 600watt.
2 x 1gb / 2 x 512meg OCZ Gold DDR500.

Thats your lot. Nice choice of CPU the 4800+ is overpriced the 4400+ is the best bet!

grats . but top of the line would be 2 7800 GTX in SLI and 4800+ X2 toledo

Still up there. I think you will love that setup.

I dont think you need 2x7800GTX but 2 would be top of the line for sure.Why do people Buy SLI boards and then buy ATI cards..lol.But anyway 1x7800GTX is awesome like PCGEEK said you will love that PC for sure.Also you ask about ram 2x1024 is best now adays with Games like BF2 and newer games coming need more ram.I would say get either 2x1GB of OCZ PC4000 Gold or Crucials PC4000.Of course there 's other brands out there .Corsair Mushkin Gigaram GSKILL GEIL all make good ram,

i'd got with the asus a8n32 sli deluxe, runs both video cards at x16 in sli.

Hahaha, nice so i struck out as far as my motherboard goes? I did hours of research...now seemingly worthless. What is the downside of the A8n-SLi premium if any? The main use and reason for building this computer is to do some hardcore gaming.

That's nice. But there's the Radeon X1800 SLI stuff with 512MB RAM.

the a8n sli premium is great, but only supports x8 sli. people didnt even know the a8n32 sli deluxe came out, so i guess that why you went with the premium. i was gonna get the premium until i found out the a8n32 came out.

Wow that kinda rattles my butt. So basically my graphics card will be running at 50% because of the MB limitations? Or am i way off?

AnandTech review

Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe: NVIDIA Dual x16 for the Athlon 64


Final Words

It's a shame that the first task in reviewing the truly excellent Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe is to set the record straight. Despite what you may have seen at other web sites, we can tell you conclusively that the Asus A8N32-SLI is not 40% to 50% faster in some games than the current Dual x8 designs. Those who concluded this overlooked the impact of the new 81.85 NVIDIA drivers and 6.82 platform drivers on the board's performance. These new drivers are definitely faster - so much so that current NVIDIA owners should definitely upgrade their video drivers.

We truly expected no increase in performance at all with the new Asus Dual x16 once the playing field was leveled. What we actually found, however, was that the A8N32-SLI Deluxe is slightly faster in both single video and SLI running our current test suite games like Doom 3, Far Cry, and Aquamark 3. The A8N32-SLI is faster, but at levels that are generally within the margin of error.

There is more to the story though. While we can't fully explain why it is faster, we did find the Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe to be as much as 8% faster on the newest games that we tested in SLI mode, and up to a whopping 17% faster in single video mode with single/dual 7800GTX video cards. These are significant increases in performance that can't be ignored. We don't know why this is the case, and we will be testing this further as more Dual x16 boards appear in the marketplace. Perhaps it is the Asus design, perhaps it is the MCP51, and perhaps it could be anything.

Please do not let the debunking of the 40% to 50% claims that others have made for this board's performance sway your opinion of the Asus A8N32-SLI. This is one fast Socket 939 motherboard worthy of a place in any enthusiast's Athlon 64 system. The 8-phase works very well to keep the board stable and cool, the heat pipes and no fans really work, and Asus even provides optional cooling fans for those who will use water cooling with this board. If you want to build a super performance, silent PC or a water-cooled or phase-change cooled super overclocker, the A8N32-SLI will serve you well. We couldn't say anything close to this about recent Asus boards, but Asus obviously designed this board to turn some heads in the Athlon 64 market.

The Asus A8N32-SLI is also a monster overclocker, reaching the highest overclock ever with our stock CPU and to 310FSB with a reduced multiplier. If you compare this performance to our other reviews of recent Asus Socket 939 boards, you may wonder if they were produced by the same company. Asus has become serious about Athlon 64, and it shows in the design, execution and performance of the A8N32-SLI Deluxe.

The A8N32-SLI is blessed with a unique and very effective design that truly works. The 8-phase design behaves gracefully under extreme loads and remains much cooler than other 3- or 4-phase designs. This yields excellent stability and headroom that we have not seen before on an Asus Socket 939 design. Asus claims that the board is up to 15°C (36°F) cooler than conventional solutions, and we saw nothing in our testing to make us doubt this claim. The board remained cool and stable under the most difficult test conditions.

In the end, we still have some reservations as to whether Dual x16 makes any difference at all in video performance. It certainly appears to improve performance greatly in the latest, greatest, and most demanding games, but we will need to dismiss other potential explanations before we become a true believer. We do not, however, have reservations about the A8N32-SLI Deluxe. This board is a definite keeper.

How do i figure my power requirements?

85 to 90 watts CPU ,

400 watts per GPU

35 watts per HDD

1.5 watts per fan

35 to 45 watts sound card

Get the spec in my sig for the beast of all beast.. especially the case :p

Hmmm snot to bad matey, nice hardwares thou dost have. The case doesnt quite hit my hot button but it sure is nice. I chose my case because its clear and i like the idea of showing off the guts. It also takes nicely to uv lighting and gives off a nice glow. http://www.xoxide.com/sunbeam-blue-led-uv-clear-case.html
Sadly as i am building this computer i am already seeing my shortfalls and dreaming of the next beast house i will build.

Does anyone have thoughts to offer as far as how to use a cases features...as far as the plugs not seeming to match up with the motherboard...adaptors needed? jerry rigging? or am i SOL?

How about an Abit Motherboard The Abit Crossfire or even the Sapphire is next on my list .

he already has those stuff that he posted. he's asking about the other stuff he should get. anyway, not to turn this into a whole flame war, but i think he wants to make this comp now, not announce it today and have it in the middle of june 06 =)

Hahaha, thanks man i was beginning to lose hope

Not to say i dont appreciate all the input everyone

you might want to wait a week or tomorrow for nvidia's 7800gtx512 :x

Ouch dude, i didnt know they were coming out so soon. Too bad, it would have nocked the price of my G card down but then again i would have bought the 512 it would have been out.

you don't need/want the a8n32. It yields very slight performance increases and the layout is poor compared to the a8n.

7800gtx512 launches tomorrow , it should be a beast. i'm happy i'm waiting till dec/jan to build my new rig. (dont get me wrong ati is great and everything but i not happy with all my systems that used ati cards)

edit: josh, wouldnt the a8n32 be more future proofing? with driver updates, the preformance should increase some more.