Choosing rams

i taking amd athlon xp 2500+ now... Should i take DDR333 or DDR 400 rams?

If you really wanna have yourself some fast ram then I would recomennd that you get PC 4200 :)

This ram runs at 533mhz. Now you will have to make sure that you have a motherboard to support it, but it sure would run fast for you. But if you can't spend that much then I would recommend the DDR 400.

i think i will take DDR 333 over DDR 400 as i don't think i will be much difference over performance as i'm on a tight budget.

Do i need to do a clean install of my OS as i'm upgrading my cpu, motherboard and rams etc... :confused:

1) Depends. What frequency is your motherboard cable of supporting? If your motherboard only supports 133 MHz Front-side BUS (333 due to the multiplier), then it wouldn't make any sense to pay for the more expensive 400 Mhz Memory. Secondly, you will have to pay attention to what bus frequencies your CPU will support, you may wind up overclocking your CPU (which isn't necessarily bad if you take the proper precautions), but if you don't know what you are doing you can damage/destroy stuff. The only time I would say take the faster memory is if 1) your MB can support it 2) you plan on upgrading in the future (then you won't have to upgrade your memory) (the faster memory can operate at slower speeds).

2) I assume you use windows. I would recommend reinstalling your OS so that it picks up everything correctly. I have seen people do it without, but they had serious stability issues after doing it, that were all cleared up after reinstallation...You may get away with it with something newer like XP or Win2k; however, I would strongly recommend against using same installation for something like WinME...

/nebulus

This is my upgrading config...

Soltek SL-75FRN2-L (nF2)
AMD XP 2500+ (BOX) Barton 512K
2 x PC 2700 Kingston DDR333

Some say DDR 400 rams compare to DDR 333 is not much difference not worth spending the extra few bucks to change.

So a clean install, with all the hardware drivers installed is the best solution in my opinion.

Yep, that would be your best bet.

That way, you have a fresh install of windows.

Good luck.

Hmm.. this is the first time i gonna to build a pc from scratch with my friend's help. Almost done with choosing the components. Now what shall i be careful or what shall i do the stability of the pc and what shall i do :p

Make sure you ground yourself. I think one static shock from our body, carries thousands of Volts, now if you think about that, then think about how nothing on the PC usually gets over 20 volts, then you can see why grounding is important.

Either buy one of those grounding wrist straps, or always try to stay in contact with the main frame of the machine.

As far as stability, thats mainly dependent on what you do to the machine. As you might expect, if you overclocked, and install a lot junk, the stability of the machine will decrease, but If you keep the machine relatively maintained (i.e. Defrag, Disk Cleanup etc) then you should have no problems.

What OS are you using? XP Pro? XP Home?

WinXp Pro. Btw, i've a 2nd hard disk i wish to install Mandrake on it but it is only a 5400rpm hard disk will it affects the performance. Actually what does the rpm of a hard disk does? a faster rpm meaning read/write/access time of the data is shorter?

RPM means how fast will the disk spin. so yeah a faster RPM will decrease your seek time allowing data to be read faster.

you shouldn't notice much of a differnce if you not going to be doing intensive things on the comptuer.

Thank cheyenne1212 for all the replies... Another question came to my mind is shall i use the default heatsink provided with the cpu or i should go get a better cooling kit. I'm not into overclocking ...

The heatsink that comes with the CPU will be fine. If your buying the retail version of the AMD processor. If you buy the OEM version, then you'll have to buy a heatsink, cause the OEM verson doesn't come with one.

Just about any heatsink will work, just make sure its compatible with Socket A.