Next is to choose a mother board. I am wanting a ASUS just because I hear alot of people talking about it on the forums, irc etc and think I would be happy with it.
you will, as long as you do not choose a cheap ASUS (SiS chipset and controllers)
For max performance and better FreeBSD support, choose a motherboard with Intel chipset (if you choose to go with a pentium of course, I've no experience with AMD)
If the motherboard from asus has onboard sound can I use a PCI sound card?
you can, of course.
Is it best to use a PCI sound card or onboard?
PCI is better, in general, as for Video or LAN, but some high end motherboard have very good (in quality) onboard feature.
my order of priority here is : lan > video > sound : if you can buy only one PCI card, take a NIC card, then a video card, then finally a sound card.
Of course, a gamer would choose to get video "offboard" as a priority. depends on your use.
I was thinking about buying the TrueBlue 480 Watt PSU 480 Watt ATX12V Illuminated from antec. Good idea?
first you list your needs : - computational power - disk space - video power - RAM use
then you choose your processor, your disks, and so on.
You should end with 1 or 2 motherboards that will suit your needs and price.
In general you'll want to avoid very cheap chipset, ultra-low end video card are just good enough for console, low end NIC with crash your freeBSD box (worst case) or drop paquets and deliver poor I/O.
Remember that PIV and latest AMD need huge PSU, 480 W will be fine anyway.
SATA disk are not yet good enough to justify their tag. IDE will be great but I would recommand a good controler (*not* SiS)
Try and choose a good motherboard that will sport 4 or more RAM slots, and that support more than 1GB RAM, so you'll be able to add some RAM later.
Don't go with IDE RAID. Even if it works great, it's extra money and hassle.
NIC : intel etherexpress Pro 10/100 is really good, most 3Com are good too, avoid low end Dlink/Realtek
Take a look a ABIT's motherboard, some of them are really good.
hth
patpro -- je cherche un poste d'admin-sys Mac/UNIX (ou une jeune et jolie femme riche) http://patpro.net/cv.php
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