Desktop or Tower and waiting on PCI-E Motherboard.

[cjp]

I'm looking at getting a complete new system this year. With CPU heatsinks getting bigger and heavier all the time I'm less and less happy about installing such beasties on a motherboard that is mounted vertically.

The various HTPC desktop style cases seem perfect for these oversized heatsinks. That is until you look at case airflow. I have found that a 120mm fan power supply provides sufficient airflow for the kind of system I want. In a desktop case such a fan will be mounted vertically drawing air across. While in a tower case it would be mounted horizontally drawing air in the direction hot air wants to go anyway, that is up. Fans generally run smoother when mounted horizontally.

However I'm still tempted to go with a ATX HTPC case as I am not a fan of the current style of tower cases. The case I'm looking at is the Silverstone SST-LC10B. For a tower case I'm thinking maybe a Nexus Breeze.

For a CPU heatsink I'm looking at either a XP-120 or a NCU-2000.
I'm not impressed with the performance of the 7700.

The only fan being that of a 120mm fan power supply. Probably a NX4090.

For a graphics card I'm looking at the Gigabyte GV-NX66T128VP.

I want a 90nm AMD 64 CPU. Possibly undervolted and underclocked.

The other big decision is what motherboard. I'm going to want to be able to underclock and undervolt in the BIOS. And it is going to need to have PCI-E. Since nothing is available just yet I'm going to be waiting until an acceptable motherboard becomes available.

As for the motherboard chipsets...

The NF4 Ultra seems to have too much rubbish crammed into a single chip and may need the active cooling. The non ultra has a crippled hyper-transport.

The ATI Xpress 200 is their first attempt. Nice north bridge, shame about the south bridge. It is a case of wait unitl the second version.

Does any one use SiS in a decent motherboard?

I've not heard anything definite about the possible AMD offering.

That leaves only the VIA K8T890.

Any comments or suggestions?