Ooops forgot about this thread sorry dude. Ok all motherboards for the Athlon XP will NOT take the athlong 64. They are a totally differnt design physically.

As for hard drive size, yes you can get away wth a 60 or even a 40. I just choose 80 because it was good value, cost vs size. SATA is the newest hard drive type. It replaces, sort of, IDE133. Its has better transfer rates and its generally faster.

Memory is one of the things that can have a huge affect on your machines performance and all are definatly not equal. Geil is a brand that is know to offer good performance, OCZ and Corsair altho these are you premium very high speed memory. If you can find it Twinmos do some good memory at a good price, I use it myself, Cruical is also good stuff. If you've decide to start with 256mb make sure that is on one memory stick. As this will allow you to use dually channel setup when you get another.

Cases are very much a personal thing. All I would say is think of air flow. You want to make sure you can add a few extra fans too create a nice flow of fresh air, from outside the case, over you components and out again. This will allow the computer to stay cooler and therefore be more stable and less prone to lockup.

I must admit I think it would be sensible to start with a non-pro gfx card. As this will allow you to get the rest of the machine up to a far better spec.

Back on the motherboard issue, whilst there is nothing wrong with the gigabyte one, i've used several in the past. The nf7 offers, at the moment, the best overclocking potential. For example i've have a xp1800+ running as a 3400+. Amd don't even make a chip that fast so I'll let you guess how much it would cost if they did. As regards the S and M options those are SATA and Multimedia. The M has a geforce built in,can't remember which thou.

Installing heatsinks is something that always give new system builders cold sweats. Just remember to get a good thermal material to put on the chip, Artic Silver 5 is ment to be superb, and take your time. Try looking at some computer website reviews as they usuall mention any mounting issue a heatsink has. Try www.cluboc.com and www.hardocp.com they bother cover alot of gear.

Hope this clears up a few of your questions.

And remember the fan is your friend.