Yeah water is not good for Electrical Components.
 
BTW you say something about DDR. I was just looking at your same exact baord on Pricewatch on Essential Computers. Tehy have it for under 150. Will it support DDR ram as well as RAMBUS(RDRAM)?
I know AMD systems backwards and forwards, but I guess I am just alittle intiimidated about a possible switch to intel.
I too was running RAID solid, but I have recently gone to One Single drive for the OS, and 2 drives on RAID for backups and programs. Hell I have 5-20gig IBM drives I don't know what to do with them all. I am actually thinking of going RAID0+1, but I want to wait on wheteher I decide to go Intel first.
Also I priced the P4's and my gosh they are expensive. 1900 is around 230-250 but the p4 2000 jumps up to the mid-300 dollar range..YIKES! I'll take a 1900 and lose 100mhz..big whoopie and save over a hundred dollars.
 
Mike

Seriously consider not going for on-board RAID, rather go for an add-in card.
I use a Promise TX2 controller and I too use RAID 0+1.
The bechmarks on the Promise controller have RAID 0+1 giving the same kind of performance as a standard RAID 0 stripe - something unheard of with the other IDE 0,1, 0+1 RAID controllers out there.
 
Also, RDRAM is now more or less the same price as DDR, there is only around £10-£15 per 256MB module difference.

I use what works well for me, and if that just happens to be Via, so be it. I've had problems from certain motherboard companies *cough*Abit*cough*, but I've run quite a few Via boards and be quite satisfied with them. I don't think it would be a good idea in any forseeable future to use anything outside of Intel and ServerWorks setups at work, but for home use Via is just fine. The systems run fine for what I do which don't really entail much real work, other than a few papers for school.

The Abit TH7-II is rdram only unfortunatly
 
If you know AMD systems, intel = no prob
 
RAID is up to you, 0+1 would be a tad expensive though 8)
 
As far as the chips go, yes they are very expensive (naughty intel). If your into overclocking you can pick up a 1.8 northwood now for a good price and they clock to 2.6 ish

i have the ati radeon x300 series model, and i;ve also had an nVidea in my old computer. the nvidea never gave me any grief, and was quite decent. i'm having some gried with my ati now, but it's just with running an old game. other than that, this card has been incredible in terms of quality, and the video out has proven useful more than once.

You want a good video card , go for the His IceQ ati radeon x850 Xt , i gurantee u won't be disapointed. You can but it at superpcmart.com

tbh both ati and nvidia hav issues depending on what card you buy, i had a geforce 5600xt 256mb and had many blue screens of death from it but i recently bought a geforce 6600gt 128mb and have had no problems with it so far. it all depends on the card if you ask me, not the manufacture

i personally like ati i got a 9800 pro