Have some basic questions about rebuilding my system.

[Menkaure]

I'm a new member and I'm looking to rebuild. I have:
Asus P4P800SE
Intel Pentium 4, 3.00 GHz
Nvidia GeForce FX5200 video card
Antec 400W Power Supply
1 Gig DDR-SDRAM
2 WD IDE hard drives 500 & 200 Gig
Plextor PX-716A & Samsung SH-S162L IDE DVD burners
Samsung Syncmaster 204B monitor
Canon i9900 & Epson R380 printers
Windows XP Pro
I built this setup but I am not one who can 'tweak', change bios, overclock, etc. I'm retired and just want a good, stable system for what I do. Mostly Adobe stuff, burning homemade DVD slideshows and some gaming.
I like Asus but have been reading the horror stories about the poor quality/setup problems lately so I really don't know what to start with. I'd like to re-use my hard drives and DVD's but I see boards now only have one IDE, the rest are SATA. I'd also like a dual core for speed, cannot afford a quad core. 2 Gigs of ram also seem like the way to go. $600 to $1000 is top dollar for me.
I found this board and am impressed with the knowledge you people have and I would like to tap into some of it.
Any suggestions/comments would be welcome.
Thanks...
Menkaure

 

[g-paw]

Video editing is very CPU intensive and can benefit from quad core but if the Intel Q6600 is out of budget then the next best would be the E6750. The Q6600 should be coming down in the next few weeks with the release of Intels new 45mm dual and quad core CPUs. If your video camera uses a firewire connections, I'd go with the ASUS P5K E with or with out WIFE. 6 SATA connectors, 3 PCI slots and onboard firewire and eSATA. If you don't need/want these features the Gigabyte P35 DS3L would be a good choice. ASUS make good mobo and usually if there is a problem with a mobo it's a specific board. Also if you're reading user reviews had a salt shaker handy. A DATA makes good inexpensive RAM. If you want to significantly overclock the Curcial Ballistix is very good. Either 2 x1Gby or 2 x 2GB. Seagate has a very good rep. The Antic Sonata III is a nice case that comes with a good PSU, is quiet, and very easy to work with especially swapping hdd. The Cooler Master Centurion is also a nice case with a 500w to 550w PSU, a good one like Antec, Seasonic, or FSP. I like my Samsung DVD burner, quiet and no coasters.

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16813131225
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16813128059
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211066

 

[nhobo]

Gigabyte DS3L, E6750 and a PCI IDE expansion card. You can run your hard drives off the motherboard and your DVDs off the PCI card. This will give you an up-to-date platform that makes use of your legacy equipment.

Installation may be a problem, as you will have to do a repair install of XP from the CD, but this will require having the IDE card installed, and I don't know if the BIOS will recognize it. Worst case scenario is you would have to buy a SATA hard drive and install the OS on that first. Then you could run your IDE drives off the expansion card.