My New Rig: Deathangel 2.0

CPU

On the desktop, I have had nothing but great results with AMD, so  I went with the Athlon 64 X2 6400+ Windsor 3.2GHz.

Motherboard

I went for the a board that could support a lot of ram, at least 8 gigs, other cpus like the Phenom so I can upgrade when there's a compelling reason, and PCI Express 2.0 for the video.  So I went with  GIGABYTE GA-MA770-S3 AM2+/AM2 AMD 770 ATX.  Supports up to 16 gigs of ram.

RAM

I have no brand preference for ram, the board supports DDR2 1066 but some of the reviews mentioned that it's only supported when combined with the quad core Phenom, so I went with G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400).

Reinstall Everything

Originally I didn't rebuild.  I just plugged in my bomb ass Raptor with it's existing XP install and it worked.  Sort of.  It was NOT stable.  And of course 32 bit XP won't see all 4 gigs of ram.  So I went with Server 2003 RC2, turned on the Luna theme, and pimped out the look and feel with Royale Noir.

I've installed most everything, but for anyone installing Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 on Windows 2003 Server, be warned, a patch is required before you can install the service pack.  Nothing is better than waiting for f*cking ever while service pack 1 is almost completely installed just to be presented with an error message indicating that the install will now be backed out  Anyway, install the patch first before installing the service pack.

FYI: The name of my machine is Deathangel like the band who I was fortunate to meet before they played at a bar in San Luis Obispo, CA where I went to college.