LOL. Guess you can learn some things only the hard way, huh? :D What taught me a lesson once was when the puter I had at that time fried three hard disks within a span of several months, and only after the third time did I learn that it had most likely to do with insufficient ventilation :-eek .Yes, my board has four mounting holes around the CPU socket, so I believe that will be all I need. I made sure I checked this when I had my case open to measure how much space I would have left for the Zalman cooler and found it would be too cramped. But as I said, I don't expect this to be a problem when I get the new case, and even if it is, business law over here mandates that you must be allowed to return any ordered item within 14 days, even if it simply doesn't meet your taste. Actually, you don't even have to state a reason if you do return it, but I digress.As for the coolers, I believe three ought to be enough for what I currently have inside my rig. I made sure I chose quiet fans, and self-regulating ones with ambient temperature sensors at that. Luckily, these are not even expensive. Even so, I will have shelled out some 140 bucks once I get all my stuff delivered, but since this will, in my opinion, be a useful investment I think I could justify it if anyone should ask.

Hi Dominik,"The readouts for each of these is 45, 52 and 30

>You'll use all three. The case temp (30C in your example>above) will be your baseline. You'll look at it and the room>ambient temp and learn alot about your case cooling. If your>cae temp is within 2-3C of the room ambient temp then you have>pretty good case cooling. Of course, the closer you can get>the case temp to the room temp the better your cooling.>>The socket and diode temps will tell you alot about your CPU>cooling. The socket temp will move slower, while the diiode>temp will seem as if it is spiking up and down. This is all>OK. Your goal is to try holding them as close together as>possible at their high and low (load and idle) readings. If>they are not within 2C of each other during steady heavy load>or idle situations, then you have a problem with your CPU>cooling. A good air cooler and fan combo will keep the socket>and diode temps very close to each other at idle and load.Alright, thanks for this info. Guess this means the difference is actually way too large on my system, huh? :-eek>A word about the Zalman... I bought one last summer when I>upgraded from the Rev 1.04 board to my current 2.0. I didn't>like the fit on my Rev 2.0 board. A couple of caps near the>Zalman needed to be moved slightly, but worse than that it>interferred with the stock northbridge heatsink! Fortunately>I bought it retail near my home, so I returned it for a>refund. The interferrence wasn't bad, and could have been>recified by moving the NB heatsink slightly. But I didn't>want to mess with it. I ordered a Thermalright SLK-947U and>56CFM/35Db 92mm fan... works a peach!Many thanks for this caution, too. As I said, I could always return the Zalman within 14 days if I should indeed find out it shouldn't fit. If this should indeed be the case, I'm thinking I would get the Thermaltake Silent Boost.>Good luck with that 2500+ Barton. If it overclocks the way I>beleive it will you'll surely be quite happy with the upgrade>path you've chosen today.One step at at time :-cool . First I'm gonna make sure my new old rig will work as it should, then I might play some OC games.

Yup Lian Li AL chassies are great but damn expensive.That is another thing about watercooling. You couldn

Another update...I studied my dealer's offerings some more and just emailed him if he could exchange the Zalman cooler for a Thermaltake Polo 735, which, based on my measurements, I am sure will definitely fit. I thought I better do this now and be on the safe side than going through the hassle of shipping it back and waiting for the replacement item. Price is the same as for the Zalman, so the bottom line ought to be the same. In addition, the Tt cooler is temperature-controlled, which the Zalman cooler is not.

And another update :-) . I got my coolers yesterday and the case today, so when I came home tonight I proceeded to transplant my system into the new case. No snags at all along the way, though I confess I did sweat a little as I was securing the new CPU cooler in place. But ASUS were clever and attached some plastic coating to the socket area to protect the circuitry in case one would slip with the screwdriver while pushing the retaining clamp down. I think the results have been worth the effort. CPU diode temp is down to an average of 30

Hi Dominik,Congrats on getting the parts for your upgrade. Sounds like the Zalman CPU cooler installed OK? This is good... it is an excellant cooler."CPU diode temp is down to an average of 30

Hi Greg,as I was doing some measurements to check whether I would have sufficient space for the cooler I found the Zalman would most likely have been too large. Plus, I was not sure it would be a good idea to bend those capacitors aside and relocate the Northbridge heat sink, since I was fearing I might ruin my MB. For this reason I went for a Thermaltake Polo cooler. This one also has the advantage of being temperature-controlled, so it will throttle up only in those heavy-load situations. It does sound a little different than the stock AMD cooler, but I don't think it is significantly more noisy. This is important to me, as I don't use this computer solely for gaming. Before I upgraded to my current CPU, I had an Athlon 1400, along with a cooler that was plainly loud, which often distracted me a lot when I was writing papers and such. It did its job, sure, but only when I prepared to upgrade to the XP was I becoming aware that good performance need not necessarily result in noise.

Hi Dominik,a friend of mine and I both have a first revision Asus A7N8X, and I can confirm that both motherboards have no problems with 400MHz FSB.Having said that, I think you made the right decision by going down the cooling route - the jump from the XP2500+ to the 3200+ isn't all that much, and IMHO not very good value for money (i.e. it's nowhere near the performance increase you saw when you changed from 1400 to 2500). And with the new 64-bit CPUs (which require new motherboards anyway), it may be worth holding back for a while and see what's out there in a couple of months...Cheers,Gosta.http://www.hifisim.com/images/as2betateam.jpg

Believe me most do. You just have to be lucky. Some will do it without volt mod many won