Received the Sonata III 500 case yesterday but had a rather unusual experience, it has a lock on the side panel and there was no key any where and upon examining the case for the bag of screws and etc noticed a small cardboard box wedged under the drive trays was finally able to use a coat hanger (after removing the I/O panel) to partially open the box and finally got my wife(small hand) to reach in through the external drive bays and retrieve the bag of goodies and sure enough the keys were in it.
So now am waiting for the memory and DVD drive.

wow that's security

wow that's security - they lock the key inside.
i have done that with my car a few times.

Check these out
Asus M3A78-EM....audio, video, HDMI,VGA, DVI, 5 Sata, +1 eSata copper SB and NB View attachment 41837
AMD 4850e 45watt
For your requirements get a 500 watt PSU
1.8volt memory if you do not plan to overclocl
Make sure your choice of HDD is Sata 3.0gb View attachment 41837

Power Supply problem I think

Got everything put together but when I tried to power up get no response. No indication of power any where, The case fan hooks directly to a ATA power connector and it does not come on. Is there an easy way to check the PSU? I have checked the power cord and have 120v coming to the PSU.

Might be a dumb question, but is the PSU s/w turned on , and set to 110v ?
Also if the PSU is located in the front of your case, sometimes the s/w arrives s from the mfgr in the off position. If that's so, you will have to remove the case's front panel to check it.

Thanks for the reply, have been through all of that. Am now in the process of boxing up the case and PSU to return can't return just the PSU. Will remember this next time an order separately.

Well Newegg finally received my RMA shipment (6 days) hopefully they will get it turned around soon, this sitting here twiddling my thumbs is for the birds. The odd thing is the 30 day return policy on the other parts goes right on, what if something is bad in that bunch?

Update & Memory?

I have just finished building a new machine and install 2-1gig sticks of memory but am confused on what shows in the BIOS:
1790MB extended memory & 640kb base memory.
In windows: 1.75Gb.
The motherboard has on board video & audio and I have not added any expansion cards. I am not having any problems just don't understand what I am seeing.

Antec Sonata III 500 ATX mid tower case w\500W PSU
AMD Athlon 64 2.7GHz dual core CPU
MS XP Pro
2 sticks Corsair DDR2-800 1024Mb ea.
Gigabyte GA-MA78g-DS3HP motherboard.

Your memory might seem lower because the onboard video uses your system memory. If you want to have it available to you you must buy an addon graphics card with its own memory.

Up & Running

Have it all together and runs like a new machine. Have one small problem, the audio doesn't come on after a reboot and so far the only remedy I have found is to uninstall in device manager and let windows reinstall on boot up. Works fine after that. Nothing appears to be wrong in device manager(no yellow signs). Any suggestions?

Tried installing the chipset drivers from the Gigabyte website?

No but will give a try this evening. Thanks

Found my problem: windows audio was set on manual, after changing that to automatic everything seems to be working fine. Looked that up and it seems all audio has to go through there at least that is what I understood and it worked.

NEW QUESTION about this MB

Can some one explain the use of S.M.A.R.T. feature and if I need it how does it work?
Tried to start a new thread but forum tools does not work for me.