If you buy from newegg, you can get Windows XP oem anyway, pro for $150. They send you a Y power splitter cable, thats all you need to "buy" (they have it on for $0 after a $5 instant coupon) to be eligible for OEM.

Wha? Most power supplies that come with a case aren't worth a crap, and powersupplies have one way to blow air, and thats out. You will usually want other fans in the case. My case came loaded with fans to move air too.

I think so. There's articles saying how spending extra money on a trusted brand works out better than buying no-name ones.

I've only had Kingsmax/Kingston and I now have PQI.

I haven't had any troubles with them.

Other people trust Corsair and OCZ. Some people use Geil but I haven't heard anyone on Allegro.cc mention it (except myself).

Note that I don't overclock, so it's still possible that Kingsmax/Kingston or PQI can't handle it well.

I would assume so, many people do it.

PC3200 RAM (400mhz) is displayed as 200mhz in the BIOS screen right?

Yeah but they might've made the BIOS say "400MHz" in that case.

I see now.

Depends on the CPU. A64 2GHz OC'd to 2.5GHz is quite a bit faster than in stock speed. It could be even faster than a stock a64 running around the same speed if memory runs 1:1 with FSB.
Stock:
multiplier: 10, FSB: 200, CPU speed 2GHz
OC'd:
multiplier: 10, FSB: 250, CPU speed 2.5GHz
If you have a really good ram you could OC like this:
multiplier: 9, FSB: 278, CPU speed 2.5GHz

The last setup will probably be faster than the second one.

No. There is absolutely no intake fan in any power supply I have ever seen. That's ridiculous.

The power supply does act as a mild exhaust fan, but that is not it's purpose at all. If it is a cheap power supply that is included with your case it is likely to only have one low rpm fan at the rear which will not serve as a very good chassis exhaust fan at all. The purpose is to release air from the power supply unit, not from the computer case. Heck, many cases are designed these days with the power supplies below the other components.

It is optimal, in a case that is designed properly, to have both intake and exhaust fans. If you add an intake and an exhaust fan and it reduces your air flow or obstructs your air flow and causes negative effects then your case is not designed properly and should be replaced. If you buy a half decent case it will already come with these fans anyway.

As for RAM, Geil is nice. It was the best on the market for a short while when they introduced their dragon-something models. Really tight timings. Personally, I like OCZ. The Platinum EL stuff is amazing.
For the average user I would just recommend name brand modules on generic PCBs. I prefer samsung for price and reliability.
Avoid Micron and Infineon like the plague. I've had issues with Hynix on bad PCB's as well. Winbond makes good modules.

Yes, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you know what you're doing. Especially without additional fans. Using the stock fans and no exhaust/intake when overclocking is begging for heat issues. Pushing the limits of your hardware often comes at a price.

Overclocking has become a lot more user friendly, but it can still be very damaging if you're not sure what you're doing. Higher frequencies means more power consumption which leads to more heat. If you can't dissipate the additional heat, then you will need to purchase a new processor and/or motherboard sooner than you would have expected.

If you do/did go with the Chaintech and plan to overclock, I would strongly advise getting some additional fans. The chipset will require air circulation (as it has passive cooling) and without it your overclocking results will be very poor -- or very expensive.

If you're going with the cheapest power supply and the cheapest case, you're going to need to purchase a new power supply in the future and perhaps some parts that it takes along for the ride.

I would recommend getting a decent case with a good power supply. Better yet, a mid-range $40 case with a seperate power supply. I always recommend the OCZ PowerStream, but it isn't cheap. About $70-$100 for a 420W. Of course, it will probably last you 10-20 times longer than a power supply that is included in your case and will be 20-30 thousand times more reliable

Some cheaper cases from Antec, AOpen and Asus (just to name a few) will include half decent power supplies, but these will not last as long as the OCZ and will not be as reliable.

SATA is faster, but the difference is not very big. However, your board supports SATA II. I would recommend investing in a Seagate with NCQ - like the one you posted a link to. Seagates have a 5 year warranty. As a general rule of thumb a hard drive will die on the day it's warranty expires, so keep that in mind when deciding which manufacturer to go with
Seagate and Samsung both offer 5 year warranties. I prefer Seagate.

Everything you need will be included. Some fancy cables you might want - such as Rounded IDE cables, as mentioned - but they aren't necessary. If you use cable ties and keep the inside of your case neat and tidy then ribbon cables should not be in the way. If you do decide to go without intake and/or exhaust fans then rounded ide cables are ultimately pointless.

Ok, there you go. You've now completed my 3-week training course

There is only one definition for 'intake' and 'exhaust'. Intake brings air into the computer, exhaust takes air out of the computer. Power supplies have their own intake, but they do not effect the air intake of the case.

That was my point, 75-80C is considered a 'heat issue'. You do realize that your prescott probably is not getting a very effective overclock at those temperatures, right? 80C is high, even for a prescott.

Only if you're simultaneously using two drives on the same channel.

We weren't talking about cooling power supplies at all, that's the important part to keep in mind. The discussion was about cooling within the computer itself, not the internals of specific components.

Under this context you can, because under the context of cooling a case an intake fan brings air into the computer by definition. It's swell that many power supplies have proper cooling systems too, but I don't recall that being disputed. The power supply's intake fan is an exhaust fan for the computer. It will never bring air into the computer, it takes air out of the computer.

Anyway. The entire point about intake and exhaust fans being important is that 80C is a far cry from ideal. Since I don't know a whole lot about how the Intel cpu throttling works exactly - I would have expected that to occur at 70C or so, but you say it isn't - I don't know about your specific case. However, with a typical AMD Athlon (with cool & quiet off ), you will surely see problems if you overclock your processor any significant amount with stock cooling and no auxilary cooling whatsoever. With cool and quiet on you will definitely see performance issues running at or above 70C. Even without overclocking you are going to be running things in a cooling environment that is less than ideal for any components using passive cooling.