Advice for new case and motherboard

  Hi All,

I am relatively new to building PC's and am on the lookout for a new case
and motherboard- full size ATX or Micro ATX. My motherboard has recently
died and currently have an Antec Aria case. Although everything fit in ok
(with Asus EN5900 PCI-Express video card), the heat build up inside was
quite high and got quite noisy not to mention system lockups.

To keep costs down, I will retain all other components which consist of the
following:

Maxtor 300GBDiamondMax 10 SATA HDD

NEC ND 3520A DVD Writer

Hauppauge WinTV 350 Tuner Card

Asus EN5900 PCI Express (for DVI out unless you can get a Mobo with
integrated DVI Out

Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Sound Card.

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Socket 939 CPU

2 x 512MB DDR 400 PC3200 RAM Sticks.

Cases i am looking at are Enlight 7473 Media Centre Case
http://tinyurl.com/d5vc5  - although supplied PSU is a bit weedy, Antec
Overture II http://tinyurl.com/7jp69  or Coolermasters ATC 620 SX1
http://tinyurl.com/c2fpc  so if anyone has any of these, would appreciate
some feedback unless anyone has suggestions on other cases.

Don't really want to spend any more than 150 UKP if I can help it but could
stretch to 200 UKP. Ideally, I would like a motherboard with integrated
video with DVI out if possible.

What do you guys recommend?

Thanks for any help
Jason.

 I just bougth a Silver Stone case - they are very nice.

"Jason Williams" wrote:

  I have no advice about cases, but would emphatically state you shouldn't get
a motherboard with onboard graphics...or if you do, don't plan on using them
for Media Center. I've found that I can get years out of a motherboard, but
there's always some new graphics I have to have long before the motherboard
becomes obsolete. I would suggest going with a brand name such as Asus,
Abit, or MSI. If you have or plan to get a MiniDV camcorder, get a
motherboard with builtin FireWire. Get lots of USB ports. And since you have
an Athlon 64, find a motherboard that claims to support their dual-core CPUs
so you can upgrade to one of those when the price drops some.

Dana Cline - MVP


the

could

 I have the Lian Li V1000B Case. It is black aluminium with a unique cooling
design. The front and bottom of the case are made of "punched" aluminum with
cooling holes (similar to the new MAC G-5 design) It ha one ultra quiet 120mm
cooling fan on the bottom front and one 120mm cooling fan mid back of case.
The motherboard gets mounted upside down putting the processor at the case.
The power supply mounts in a separate compartment in the bottom rear of the
case. The hard drives mount directly in back of the front fan. The case is
vertical and mounted on wheels. It's a very durable case with a great design
that matches other components in the system as well as being ultra quiet and
cool.

"Dana Cline - MVP" wrote:

 Excellent advice Dana.  However, there are a few boards out there with
integrated graphics that will work for him for a while, and save some money.
You can always turn off the integrated graphics later and add a new card.

Stu