[COLUG] Upgraded Hardware - Foreseeable Problems?

[Stephen P. Molnar, Ph.D.]

I am currently running SuSE v9.3 on an old, slow 32bit CPU and am 
contemplating several upgrades in sequence.  I would appreciate some advise 
as I am definitely not a hardware person and primarily run other folks 
scientific software (I have a research program in computational chemistry) 
rather than write my own.

The CPU I'm looking at is the AMD Athlon 64 3500+.  The motherboard is a MSI 
K9N Neo-F, MS-7260 Ver 1.0 K9N nForce 550 (I don't know anything about 
hardware, but I can copy a label).

The motherboard only has one PCI slot for a master and a slave.  My current 
linux box has 3 HD's, but I'm prepared to give one up (keep it as a spare for 
my Win XP machine).  There are 4 SATA connections, but I know nothing about 
them.  I presume that any hard drive connected to one of those must be a SATA 
HD, or is there some sort of adapter?  Also, what about DC/DVD drive how 
would that be connected?  I have an old CD drive on the linux box now, but am 
willing to upgrade it to a DVD.

Sorry to have asked so many low level questions, but, as I said, I'm not a 
hardware person.

Thanks in advance.
-- 
Stephen P. Molnar, Ph.D.				        Life is a fuzzy set
Foundation for Chemistry					Stochastic and multivariant
http://www.geocities.com/FoundationForChemistry