So, I am considering buying this mothorboard http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1470687&csid=_61 and pairing it with this processor http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6620917&CatId=4919 Then connecting a power supply and CD reader. Boot it with my live Fedora CD. Not going to put it in an enclosure, just spread it out on the bench. Will this work? Is there something I'm not considering?

 

I am not too familiar with AMDs, but I think it should work. You might consider looking at MSI's site and checking if the board supports the cpu.

 

Well, I just pulled the trigger on it. One thing I wasn't thinking about was RAM. But the sales guy at Tiger Direct was on his game, and made sure I had what I needed. I did check MSI's site before buying the CPU, and also asked the sales guy. We'll see in a little while how this works. I plan on booting Fedora 11 from CD and not connecting a hard drive.

 

OK, so I got the thing to boot up into bios. Now I want to plug in a CD ROM and boot from a live Fedora CD. But I'm not sure how to configure this? If I select the CD as the boot disk, how does the system know where the CD is? It would normally be plugged into the 3rd SATA slot, or not? Now I'm not even sure I can run this without a hard drive. I didn't consider before that the system might need swap space. Will I need a hard drive? Or can I just run with the CD and live Fedora?

 

OK, well I just plugged the CD ROM into slot 1, set up to boot from CD in the bios, inserted the live CD, held my breath and let 'er rip. Linux booted and is running, although slowly. No swap space so I guess I should expect that. But the good news is it's up and running, ready for testing.