# Antec Case - Already had
# 430W power-supply -- already had that too
# ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO motherboard. Ordered from Newegg.com (Part # N82E16813131406)
# Althon IIx4 635 quad-core CPU. Ordered from Newegg.com (Part # N82E16819103702)
# 16gb RAM - G.Skill Ripjaws series. Newegg.com (Part # N82E16820231309)
# ASUS SATA DVD-RW. Newegg.com. (Part # N82E16827135204)
# 2 - 1tb Seagate SATA-3 disks. On sale at the local CompUSA
# 1 - 320gb WD EIDE disk - already had
# 1- 160gb WD EIDE disk - already had
# Intel PWLA8391GT 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI PRO/1000 GT Desktop Adapter - PCI card. ESXi doesn't recognize the onboard RealTek NIC. Newegg.com (Part # N82E16833106121)

SATA are setup in the BIOS as AHCI. This wasn't really needed as ESXi saw them just fine with the out of the box setting (which I don't remember at the moment). I did not setup any kind of RAID since it would not be a benefit to me for what I am going to be using this box for.

ESXi was loaded onto the 320gb PATA drive since I could never get the mobo to boot from the USB mem stick.

Built a couple of VMs(one RHEL5.4) and Win2k8 and everything is working great. Only issue I ran into was RHEL5.4 would not boot when I let it install with RH virtualization pkgs. I re-installed without those and it has been going strong ever since.

a BIG THANKS to all who helped me put this together !!!!

Bill