Making My Own Computer

[gobeavs]

Dual channel RAM makes a difference in Intel setups (and some with the regular Athlons), but not as much with Athlon 64's. The Athlon 64's on-die memory controller makes the RAM so accessible, that another channel to access it from doesn't help that much. There is so much latency with the RAM in Intel setups, that dual channel memory helps.

As noodlenight said, the budget issue is paramount. If you are tight, then that barebones system you picked out seems to be an excellent choice.