help upgrading motherboard...

[jbow52]

I'm thinking about upgrading my motherboard and cpu. I am now using an Ali Aladdin 5 chipset with a AMD K-6 II 450 chip. I wan't to go to (maybe) either an Asus P4T-E with RAMBUS memory with 512 MB RAM/PC800 RDRAM and a Pentium 4 2 Ghz chip...or... a Gigabyte GA-8IRXP motherboard with DDR memory and 256 MB RAM and a 1.8 GHZ chip.
I will probably be reformatting before I install this just to be safe.
I have two main questions
1: Can I do this? Does anyone know if one of these new boards will work where this Ali board has been, is the system compatable? How do I find out?
2: Is this something that I want to even try or am I going to get in way over my head?
The reason for this is to speed up the computer without spending too much money, i'm open to suggestions about the motherboards and chips ie. better ones, cheaper/just as good. Also i'm going to get a new sound card, probably the Terratec DMX 6 Fire. and maybe Cakewalk Sonic. So I need a little more computer.

Thanks for any input, julien

[P.Sound]

You said you're using Ali Aladdin 5 chipset with a AMD K-6 II 450 chip and wanting to go to an Asus P4T-E with 512 MB RAM/PC800 RDRAM and a P4 2 Ghz chip...or... a Gigabyte GA-8IRXP motherboard with DDR memory and 256 MB RAM and a 1.8 GHZ chip.

The compatibility of the ALI/AMD K6 is a non-issue because you won't be using it. All you need to do is get the motherboard of your choice (for me from your list would be the GA-8IRXP), put in the Mushkin 512 DDR CAS 2-2-2 (http://www.mushkin.com/cgi-bin/Mushkin.filereader?3ce7ca141bf7b9b62740c0a8010206a 5+EN/products/990892) $199 (preferred), slap in the CPU, attach the cooler, make sure your power supply is P4 compliant (with the extra power leads), slap in the motherboard, attach the hard drive(s), floppy, etc., follow the motherboard initial boot instructions (which should recognize your existing drives without reformatting) and make music! Maybe this is a little simplified, but it really isn't hard to do.

If you are concerned about the building aspect, I recommend you go to this site PC Mechanic Build your own PC (http://www.pcmech.com/byopc/index.htm) and read the article. You'll find out, its not hard at all building a DAW, PROVIDED you pick the right components. And you've identified some good components.

[Styrerra]

DO more research and look into getting a mother board with 4 IDE slots (sometimes called with 2 RAID slots).

This will be benificial in a DAW set up where you can isolate your hard drives into their own slots and put the the CD-R and CD into the same slot or each their own as well.

Or you can pick up a PCI based controller card but I would go for a motherboard with 4 IDE slots. IMHO

[P.Sound]

Originally posted by Styrerra
DO more research and look into getting a mother board with 4 IDE slots (sometimes called with 2 RAID slots).

Like a Giga-Byte GA-8IRXP that supports up to 2GB DDR memory, 6PCI 1CNR 3DDR 4XAGP CT5880, ATA133, DR266, FSB400, 4 IDE w/RAID, Dual BIOS, 4USB2.0, LAN