AMD to Intel upgrade spec check pls :)

[Rainmaker]

It's my birthday today... well it was til about 27 mins ago anyway LOL Anyway! The gf is letting me upgrade my rig as a late present Current specs:

Compaq/MSI mobo (some restricted, cut down SATA1 DDR1 rubbish)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2Ghz CPU
Arctic Freezer 64 Pro
Akasa Ultra Quiet 500W Paxpower Active PFC PSU
3GB RAM (2x 1GB, 2x 512MB Corsair Value DDR1 PC3200)
Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7,200rpm 32MB cache hdd
Nvidia GeForce 8600GT (XFX overclocked)

1x 120mm front fan (in front of HDD bays)
2x 80mm rear exhaust fans

Although the machine was originally a Compaq, since I got "the bug" I've cannibalised it, put it in a new case and pretty much upgraded everything except the original mobo LOL Everything else is new/replaced/upgraded. I'm thinking of putting the mobo/cpu/ram on a well known auction site and replacing it with:

Asus P5Q-E mobo
Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 G0 stepping edition
4GB (soon to be 8GB) OCZ DDR2 5400 Memory Kit Vista Upgrade Edition

To that I'd add one more 500GB Seagate for RAID. Any suggestions, thoughts or comments before I commit? My mate reckons the sound (Intel 7.1) on these mobos is rubbish (no Linux support and rubbish Vista support?!)... TIA.

EDIT - I'm running Vista Ultimate 32 bit at the moment but have the 64 bit DVD for the extra RAM when the time comes.

 

[Rainmaker]

Ouch, sorry for the delay replying guys - I didn't get any email notifications

Semi, I'm going to buy an aftermarket cooler. I was looking at the Scythe Ninja rev. B (quieter than a TT and apparently has a beautifully flat base according to FrostyTech).

Rj, I've been doing a LOT of reading about mobos this week. I'd read that the P5Q has quite poor IO throughput compared to other boards, especially on the LAN side (almost half that of competitor boards with the same chipset!). Apparently the IH10R southbridge fixes the earlier (9) chip's problems with poor RAID speed though, so that's good. The only real downside (if you can call it that) is so far the P5Q's LAN chip (Atheros) needs Linux drivers to be manually installed - I'd have to keep them handy on USB until the kernel catches up (Atheros HAVE released the open source drivers).

How hard can it be to shop for a mobo? LOL It seems the more I've learnt the more undecided I've become overall. I've read that the Abit IP35 Pro is good despite the extra cost (it's dearer for an Abit P35 than an Asus P45!) - but again the heatsinks are apparently so bad on the north and southbridge that 2/3 of them require lapping to work! So it's looking like Asus wins overall.

If it helps with any recommendations:

* I'm set on the Q6600
* I only need 1x 100MB ethernet so the expensive 2x gigabits are overkill
* Raid 0 and decent throughput is a must
* I only have 1x PCIe gfx card (8600GT) and don't ever intend to go SLI, period.
* I don't need fancy optical/digital sound ports or anything like that
* N00b friendly overclocking features required (I've never oc'd before)
* Stability and cool running appreciated

My rig plays the odd game (UT2004, UT3, HalfLife2) but nothing major. 95% of my usage is web/email/IM, downloading from Usenet, heavy PAR/unraring donkey work, and watching 720p and 1080p video. I also do a lot of network stuff (VNC/NX, sFTP, sending files around the LAN, serving web pages and FTP from home etc) and build/compile a lot of software (Linux).

Looking at that I won't need a hugely top of the range board, but with the RAID 0 and heavy networking I do want decent performance and cool running. My machine has been on 24/7 for the last 3 years lol

I liked the look of the Asus stuff simply because of its reputation, and the tons of utilities (easy bios update from USB, bios recovery if I n00bishly bork my oc, fan control etc). I'm very open to recommendations though. Gigabyte boards scared me off simply because they didn't seem to have all the features Asus did, and frankly their naming system confused me so meh

Thanks in advance for any help, and sorry this was so long.