i have no problem with the mobile bartons at all . they are still unlocked ,and i think there the best bang for the lowest buck right now still.( im using them in the asus mb's) Moil maybe have tried them in a different mb's and may have had problems with them i dont know.
as for the mainboard well thats gonna have to be your dissision of what to get . as i said go to the amd forums and read read read . pick the mainboard that is a mainline product (one that alot of people use) and pay attention to how many have major issues with it or failures ... remember some guys just arnt smart enough to figure out something and they call it a pile of junk (they are ussually obvious) I do recommend that you try to stay with an nforce chipset though .
ok 2x ide means that you can place two components on each ide connection .
as example one hard drive and one dvd player on one cable
on the second cable you can place one cdrom and one hard drive
sata is another connection all on its own and it is made for placing a sata harddrive (this also requires its own drivers loaded up and set up correctly in the bios ) yes the sata is a faster drive , but sometimes it can be frustrating getting it setup and working correctly . Id suggest adding one later as you get more familiar with hardware/drivers/bios/software/raid config's ect . I dont think there that much of a gain in a single hd setup . or unless your running a small server.
as for this being your 1st pc build i would suggest keeping it simple and try to keep the cost down
(i think id agree with Moil about the case /ps issue you may just want to step up to a higher priced case with a good ps in it )
So are we having fun yet ... lol
as for epox main board's i cant really comment on them because ive never built with one . (perhaps Moil will send me one ,and i'll play around with it ) ..
