looking for a little advice

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flutterbudget

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I have been wanting to upgrade for a while now and my power supply died and took my mobo with it, so now I have an excuse.

First of all, the PRIMARY use of this machine is not sor gaming. I really mostly use it for mundane web surfing, email, playing music, paying bills, burning cd's, some photoshop stuff, etc. However, I do occasionally use it for games. (Probably will more once it's upgraded.) And the games that I like tend to be fairly high performance. (For example, I have my eye on Doom 3.)

I have already gotten a new case. Yes, it came with a psu. No, I'm not planning on using the stock one. That's not really where I need the advice. I have a hd, optical drives, and peripherals. I also have a Radeon 9600 graphics card that I think will be okay for now.

So, what I'm really shopping for is a cpu and mobo. I am looking at these two cpu's:
here
or
here

And I am wanting suggestions on a good board to go with it. I like Asus. I have looked at a couple:
here
and
here
But they seem to have mixed reviews.

How important is socket 939? And is there really any advantage ATX vs. MicroATX?

Any other thoughts for me?

Thanks
 
For your needs I would go for the AMD 64 3500 and the ASUS A8V (non M-ATX)

Micro ATX is smaller than ATX so you will have space around your case if you have a full ATX case.
 
It's a mid tower case and my dead board was Micro. I never had any problems with it until the psu killed it. I just wondered if there was any real difference other than size/airflow issues?
 
There isn't any difference really. A full ATX will have more PCI slots and more features though.

Why would there be airflow problems?
 
Only if things are cramped together. Not that I've ever had a problem. Heck, the extra space around it might improve airflow...

I'm not sure how many PCI slots I realistically need.

What types of more features do you mean?
 
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