A couple questions...

[linnerd40]

Hey, I have a couple of questions... sorry if they may seem a bit stupid... but I just want to make sure.

1. I am getting a new AMD Athlon 3700+ Socket 939 processor with this motherboard. In the near future, I also plan on getting a new hard drive. Heres the thing: I want to buy a new SATA hard drive like this one, but I still want to keep one of my old ATA100 drives (40gig, 5400RPM). Will these 2 hard drives work together? I will boot a seperate OS from each. So can I boot these together?

2. I also want to buy some more RAM, currently I have 512MB installed in my system. If I buy another 512MB stick of a different brand (same speed though), will the 2 work well together? Or do both stick have to be from the same company/ make? What about if I buy a 1 gig stick? Will it still work?

Thanks a lot for any help you can give me, and thanks for your time!

~linnerd40

 

[PerfectSK]

I dunno about that mobo, it looks a bit outdated. Here's one from ASUS around the same price, and it supports pci-e, so you can upgrade to decent graphics.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131035

For that mobo and the one I recommended, you can use up to 4 ata drives. Yeah, I believe SATA is backward compatible with other ATA drives. As for the memory question, you can use different branded memory as long as it is the same speed like pc3200, and you can only use as much memory as your mobo supports. You could use a 1gb stick, but two 512 sticks makes the memory dual channeled, and it allows for faster access of memory. Both mobo's use pc3200 ram.

 

[linnerd40]

Thanks for the advice! Still, I got that motherboard because of the AGP support, I still have an AGP graphics card that I don't want to give up just yet (I don't game, so I really don't need a fast PCI-e graphics card).

Anybody else?

 

[Atomic Rooster]

1. Yes, you can mix SATA and IDE drives on the same comp. You can also setup a dual boot with those too.

2. Yes, you can mix memory brands as long as the speeds are the same such as PC2700, PC3200 etc. They will also run in dual channel as posted above.

 

[Bob94571]

not really on topic but even if the ram you were buying was say pc2700 ur 3200 will underclock itself to pc2700... just a little knowledge to share

 

[MikeReiner]

not really on topic but even if the ram you were buying was say pc2700 ur 3200 will underclock itself to pc2700... just a little knowledge to share

Yeah, thats true. I found that out the hard way. I mixed a 2100 with a 2700.. the 2700 clocked down to 2100. Makes sense though..

 

[linnerd40]

Thanks everyone! My questions have been answered .