Shuttle-Sized SSF's for AM2 or Intel Core 2?

[Le_Petit_Lapin]

Hi,

I need to get another PC put together, as the current one is bugging me. Been unstable for about a week, after I whacked in another Gig of RAM, works fine without it, but with all the bits together, its unstable, no matter what the settings (and with DFI, theres a massive ammount of settings to work through )

So....was looking at getting a 2 Gig det of DDR RAM to whack into it instead, matched pairs, but....then I realised, theres no point, the damn things wont be usable in a future upgrade anyway, so I've decided to go with a new PC "base unit" instead. Sell the old one as seperate bits in Members Market (including a Opty 148 CABYE. ) It all works fine, just not as a "set".

Preformance wise, I see good things about the Intel Core2 processors, but then again, I'm also told AM2 will offer decent upgrade potential. are these statements both true?

If so, I'll go with the more immediate preformace preference of the Core 2 processors. What SSF cases are available for these Core 2 processors at present? There might be some on OCUK, but with the new layout, I cannot find 'em.

What Graphics cards fit in these types of cases? I assume they need to use Single Slot cooling? x1900pro, or 7900 will do fine for my needs. DX10 isn't really needed by me yet seeing as I wont be "upgrading" to Vista soon. Besides the DX10 Graphics cards are rather expensive right now.

RAM, what are my options? Any specifics aside from DDR2? Is there any "fat" sticks of RAM out there that wont fit?

CPU coolers.....I'll need one of those, I've a W/C loop here, but theres no damn way it'll fit in there (at least without a tedious ammount of case modding that I'm not min the mood for right now). What CPU coolers do I have as options?

Right, if you've managed to get through that rambly mess of a post, congratulations! Can you offer any advice?

Edit: Oooh....and Surround sound too.

Is this even possible?

 

[Le_Petit_Lapin]

aye, after reading that thread on [H]ard, it seems everyone loves the Abit nView motherboard, and I might just go with that along with a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4600+. at least I'll be on familiar ground (AMD) overclocking wise should I take the urge. I keep reading that this Asus P5B-VM board for the Core 2 is more or less a dead dog at O/C'ing.

Also, if I'm not mistaken that board looks like it has a nice 1 slot gap (by "gap" I mean the PCI-E 1x slot I wont be using) between the PCI-E 16x GPU slot and the two other PCI slots, meaning I could get a OcUK MSI GeForce 7900 GTO SILENT 512MB in there and still be able to use the outside PCI slot for a X-Fi soundcard, and give the GPU a bit of room to breathe as it were...

Does this sound right? If theres another Graphics card in the store that would give me better preformance for similar price, reccommend away. ATi or nVidia, I'm not bothered either way.

So...with all that in mind....how does this sound:

Abit NFM2-nView nForce 6150 Micro ATX (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4600+ 2.20GHz (Socket AM2)
OcUK MSI GeForce 7900 GTO SILENT 512MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express)
G.Skill 2GB DDR2 NR PC2-6400 (2x1GB) CAS5 Dual Channel Kit (F2-6400)
Lian-Li PC-V300 Case

Other questions:

The Case, it takes an ATX PSU (like my Hiper 580w) ok?
The Case package....are fans included?
The RAM, that stuff listed above isn't for O/C'ing as I wont be right off the bat, but will the Motherboard be ok with PC8000 stuff?
The Motherboard, does it have PATA slots? I've a large PATA HDD here that I'd like to use. Looks like theres PATA slots in the pictures of it, but thats not included in the item description on OCUK.
CPU Cooler, What fits? (Kind of an essential question there)