Be forewarned—not all ATX v2 power supplies are created equal. I just picked up a couple of MSI 945P Neo-F motherboards, because they had everything I wanted: Intel SocketT, DDR2, SATA 2 RAID, sound, gigabit network—and the price was pretty reasonable (I bought them from ZipZoomFly.com, where I get most of my hardware). Turns out they not only require ATX 2 power supplies (which I had), but they require ones with an 8-pin molex connection on top of the 24-pin and an additional 4-pin molex connection. How many power connectors does one motherboard require???
Anyway, I had to order replacement power supplies. The ATX 2 power supplies I got were bundled with the cases I picked up, so I just figured they were all the same. I figured wrong, for once.
I did find that the Xeon processors typically have this 8-pin “EPS” molex connector requirement, but be aware that not all ATX 2 power supplies are created equal.
I’m heading to Spokane on November 15th for the SQL Server 2005 launch, as well as the VS .NET 2005 launch. Should be an interesting day, not to mention free attendance = free software. In my experience, never say no to free Microsoft software.