I am going to migrate the hardware from a not so living room friendly full tower case to a much smaller more attractive one.... what do you think of this setup?

CASE: Athenatech A100SC

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=11-190-003&depa=1

MB: CHAINTECH "7VIF4" KM400
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=13-152-030&depa=1

CPU: 1.8 Duron or 1.5 Sempron....

Which should i get... they are same price!

Rest of the hardware I already have,
Gforce 4mx 400 w/tv out
256MB ram
Soundblaster Live
120GB WD HD

Thanks!

The chipset on the motherboard may give you issues.... For Athlon based boxes Nforce2 is about the best supported. Did you mean the Chaintech 7NIF2? If not, double check the Tier 1 and Tier 2 topics to make sure someone has reported success with it.

A small case like this will limit your expansion options somewhat. I find myself perenially short on disk space and am looking at a bigger case when I upgrade to give me room to grow.

Other than than, my constant cry is, "more disk space!"

Thanks for the reply...after doing some searching it looks like VIA chipsets are probably smart to watch out for....

instead of that mb, what do you think of :
CHAINTECH "7NIL1-SUMMIT" nForce2 Ultra 400
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-152-024&depa=1

Probably fine. Again check for success stories here and elsewhere to ensure you know what to expect before it arrives. The picture at NewEgg shows a chipset fan, rather than a passive heatsink, which may be an additional source of noise in the system, but that's probably minor.

On the CPU front, I'd go with whichever one runs the coolest, or that being equal the one with more zing for the extra headroom.

FYA - Partly inspired by this thread and another new hardware troubleshooting thread I've put up a longish page on the wiki about selecting hardware.

http://knoppmythwiki.homelinux.org/index.php?page=PickingComponents