Building Computer Question

okay, so far this is what I'm planning to get.

Motherboard
ASUS M2N-E Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 Ultra MCP ATX AMD Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16813131022

CPU
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Windsor 2000MHz HT 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 Processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16819103747

alright, this is where I have questions. With the new am2 socket for AMD Athlon x2's, they all support dual channel ddr2. What type of ram would you suggest. From a little reading I have done, the higher mhz the ram is, the faster. So I was thinking of getting DDR2 800 (PC2 6400), thats the highest the motherboard supports. Or, is there not really much difference between the 800, 667, and 533? The question is, does all of the ddr2 800 dual channel work on this motherboard? I was reading some guy's comment on some motherboard and he was saying the brand OCZ ram doesn't work on socket am2 motherboards? Is that true? also, I don't understand the different timings for the ram. what is it?

I am planning on getting a sata hard drive. I have never used them before and don't know much about them. Do they act just like a ide hard drive? meaning, you can use them for the same things, loading os and storage... just different connection and speeds?

thanks for the help

The speed of the RAM depends mostly on the FSB of the processor.
Since you processor is an AMD (AM2 socket) it works on 2000 Ghz (Hyper transport).
Mostly those speeds are spread over 2 lats of memory, so the max speed could be 1000MHz.

So it's better to use 800Mhz DDR2 ram , since the board is dual channel you have to use paired ram modulles. (mostly discreibed aks Dual channel Kit)
About the brand I can't help you with that , (I mostly use Twinmos or Corsair).

The supported brands are in the manual of the mainboard that you can download on their site.
the brands in the manual will work certainly, other may work also but are not garantied by Asus.

SATA drives are getting the standard these day for Hard drives.
While the optimal media like DVD writer and so stay on the PATA connection.
So if you are buying a new drive I should recommend you to buy a SATA drive.
In my country the price is almost the same for the 2 types.

For faster disk access you can always use a RAID config , but then you need more then 1 disk.

Yeah the different speeds of the RAM will have a difference when the system is being taxed, like in a newer PC game, an MMORPG, or something else that is a resource hog. Most of the time if your just browsing the net or typing some stuff in word or listening to Winamp, etc. You probably won't notice the different speed a lot of the times because I know in my experience I haven't noticed the difference much in normal day to day activities.

But it is definitly the good idea to use the dual channel part of the ram but then you need 2 modules of the RAM. because that way the RAM's work is split between the two of them kind of like an SLI setup on video cards.

And yes SATA hard drives are much faster than a normal IDE HDD, and honestly with a socket AM2 you could probably even go with a SATA II HDD since they do have a new version of SATA on the market I thought last time I checked but with as new as that mother board is I think it supports SATA 2. All in All thanks for bringing up your concerns because I didn't realize the socket AM2 boards supported DDR2 RAM, I need to get me one now.