Senior Project PC

Hey for my senior project this year I built a PC working with a local computer company, and I did not get the support/knowledge I was looking for but I do know this is what I have.

AMD Athlon 64 3000+
MSI K8N Neo
(2) Kingston 512 DDR Memory, they told me that if I have one chip in the top and one chip in the bottom slot this was dual channel. Is this correct?
ATI Radeon 9600 XT 128 MB
WD 80 Hard Drive Serial, is this SATA? ohh, and seeing there is another serial cable that came with my motherboard, how hard would it be to set up an additional hard drive? I have the RAID driver disk that came with the mobo.
Motorola SM56 Modem
LG DVD Burner
LG CD Burner
3.5 Floppy
Blue iCute case w/neon

Any thoughts comments would be appreciated, although they told me this was a fast PC I am thinking I could have got some better parts for not to much more $$, and that when XP 64-bit came out I would be able to upgrade. Any comments on 64-Bit? I applied for the beta, but have not got it yet. Also have pics for anyone interested. I did learn quite a bit though, PC's are not as hard to build as I once thought, and I passed my project with an A+ so I will be graduating.

 

Most good computers have an additional RAID-ATA , Ultra IDE Primary-Secodary drive ports, allowing up to four extra H.D.s. The RAID ARRAY, allows you to pair H.D.s together for increased data transfer rates or configured for backup redundancy. I would keep it simple for now. Any computer will allow you to connect another Drive on the same primary IDE as your C:

 

Congrats on your project and your A+!!
Good choice on your optical drives. IMHO LG, a Korean manufacturer, has emerged as a quality, high-end supplier of computer and cell phone devices.

 

How much this set you back?

 

Not a bad box!

Typical DDR Dual Channel RAM sticks come in twos. Both go into a twin-DDR memory port on your motherboard. Dual-DDR ports are in pairs and are colored differently to signify different slots. Both sticks go into one slot. If all the DDR slots are together instead of two per space, then you have plain DDR.

If it's SATA, it'll have a strange-looking L-shaped plug that goes into a small plug on your motherboard. The cables are usually slim and flat instead of round.

I would like to make a suggestion: The Radeon 9600XT will do good with games for now, but I would recommend an upgrade in about a year. It's a pretty-good mid-range card, though, so stick with it.

Otherwise, good job!

 

Thanks fellas! Those wondering how much they charged me the total with parts, keyboard, mouse, speakers, colored cables, I paid $1395. Thanks again!