newbie needs help with Athlon 1400 system

[tdev]

Hi,

I'm building an Athlon 1400 266 system as I've heard the "rave reviews" of Athlon performance at a great price ... but now I'm wondering if it's worth the aggravation. So I'm in need of a little help.

I'm putting the processpor in a MSI K7T Turbo LE board with 512 mb of Ram. I have a 300W Inwin case and will use Windows 2000 as my OS.

Problem 1 is that most people online say to use the thermal grease with the heatsink unit but the processor ships with just a tab to pull off and that's it. No mention of using grease. I'm not going to be overclocking so do I need the grease. I'm a little confused with the debate cause if grease was so important shouldn't it be mandatory in all situations?

Problem 2. I have an ATI VE video card and a Soundblaster Live sound card. I've just come across many people saying that the Soundblaster card will crash Athlon systems and lead to all sorts of problems. A friend of mine was having all kinds of mysterious problems for the last month and know they make perfect sense as they sound exactly like the bugs I've been reading about. But he was using Windows ME. Does anyone have any info regarding Athlons and Soundblaster Live with Windows 2000.

Thanks.

T
:confused:

[WidowMaker]

Ok, for starters useing a good thermal compound is definatly recomended but not a must. I would recomend using Artic Silver II
even if ur not overclocking it is much better than the transfer tape that normally comes with the HSF. Cooler is better :). Use a credit card to scrape off the tape, (wich is good for only one use anyway) and then use a small amount of compound. (do not spread it over the whole cpu, just a thin layer right on the dye.

As far as the SB live, i have two of them one with an epox 8K7A+ and the other with the KG7 both are runnin fine, however, i have heard the same complaints, i belive most of the problems are due to the extra IRQ it takes. Im sure itll depend partly on your board to. But best i can say is it gave me problems with my old Abit KT7A
but nothin since. Hope that helps.