motherboard question follow up

[muppet]

Me again.

This is my specs,

hp pavillion a1626n,although i have upgraded almost everything in it.

250gb hd
amd 64 x2 5400
3gb of pc 4200 ram
8800 gts 640 mb
x-fi extreme music
550 watt ps
plus a new case

The reason i asked about upgrading the mobo was for 2 reasons,the first being that the bios does not display temps so i cant tell hot hot my cpu is running at and the second reason being that a bigger mobo would allow for more room between the video and sound cards for better cooling.Another question i have is i when i run 2gb of ram (2x 1gb sticks)i get a index score on vista of 5.9 for ram but when i use 3x1gb sticks my score drops to 4.5 i think this is because its not running in dual channel mode with the 3rd stick?so i was going to buy another gb for a total of 4 x1gb sicks to put in 4 slots ,,,,would this put me in dual channel again?I know vista wont read all 4 gbs but i dont care as long as it puts me back in duakl channel mode.Alo hp says i cant upgrade the cpu to no more than the 64 x2 5400 as i have done but i was wondering if anyone else that had the same pavillion a1626n has done so or can it be done as i wanted to get a 64 x2 6000 2mb cache.
I have no trouble running sh4 but am always tring for the best machine i can get.

Thanks for your help ,the reason i ask in here as i know there are very smart people here that know more about pc's the hp support ever will.

[Zantham]

For monitoring your CPU temps try Core Temp, it works with Intel CPU's and should work with your AMD too. AFAIK it does not require your motherboard to support temp monitoring since it gets the value directly from your CPU.

http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/

For your RAM you are correct, you must have sticks in pairs to run dual-channel. Dual channel can be picky tho, preferably you should get all matching RAM (usually sold as dual-channel kits). You can get 2x1GB kits for 2GB, or 2x2GB kits for 4GB. If your RAM is not matched, then you can run into serious stability problems and can adversely affect your performance with respect to timing mismatches. Also you will find generally 2x 1GB RAM to be faster than 2x 2GB RAM because of the higher latencies of the higher density chips in the 4GB kits. This is most noticeable if you are overclocking. If you arent then its not a huge difference. Usually you can run 2x 1GB at Command 1T, but 2x 2GB at Command 2T, and this has a performance impact on your performance, most noticeable with AMD CPU's.

I cannot directly answer whether your motherboard will accept a 6000+, in theory it should be no problem since there is no difference in bus speed that I'm aware of, just uses a higher multiplier. Perhaps there is a BIOS flash that will upgrade your board to accept this CPU? Try googling your motherboard model?

As long as your sound card is not right nect to your video card (at least one slot between) there should be no problem with heat with an 8800GTS. Of course.. more space is always better :)