Hi there,

I would ditch the 6200. Just make sure your PSU is up to the task of powering a 7950GT. There will be CPU bottlenecking but this may not be a concern for you. Other cards you might want to consider for this generation of build are the Geforce 3, 4xxx Ti series, FX5900. 6600GT and 6800GT are also nice (unlike the 6200). From the Ati side, a 9800 Pro is arguable the classic card for this era.

Also, you might wanna budget for a motherboard in better condition. A half-dead board is very frustrating when starting off in this hobby. Good luck and have fun!

The board's actually not in bad shape, the caps are just a bit swollen and one has leaked in the past. But thanks, I'll keep my eye on those things. I should probably try and source a good quality nForce 2 motherboard, but that's been quite a challenge.

Vt600 boards are not bad too if yiu cant find a decent nf2

That's actually not a bad suggestion either. The problem is that I can't find one of those two boards in South Africa. This means that I have to use eBay and the postal service workers in my country are on strike. So stuff from overseas takes very long to get here and there's a good chance they'll get lost too. Amazon's courier is reliable. Anyway, I've got about 12A on the 12V line on the Rosewill. Sourcing AGP cards is also difficult, most people here have literally fried theirs through overclocking or they have a 5200 or 6200. The 7950GT seems to be the best I can do.

That psu is a real weak link for that system and will hold you back big time when it comes to high end agp cards. If you had known that on amazon there is a cheap source of enermax power supplies from the time that are very high quality. That 7950GT will need roughly 5 amps give or take and keep in mind that with generic power supplies (really crappy ones) heavy loads on both the +5v and +12v rails can cause problems.

When I meant cheap I mean less than $20 before shipping, bought one for $25 a few weeks ago and was the 380W model with the huge 32 amp +5 rail that is just right for socket A and older builds.

Back in the day when AXP was new I had FX5900 and then 6800GT - I'd suggest the 6800 for wider support of newer games. GF7 will work just as well, but will be more heldback by the CPU (that is - I wouldn't be surprised if the gains over a 6800 are minimal when measured). If you want to go ATi any of the higher end 9xxx series (9500 or higher) would also be a good choice - usually 9600s and 9700s are cheaper than 9800Pro because they aren't as historically revered.

I would also probably suggest better PSU and an Audigy of some sort (alt nForce 2 with Soundstorm if you want to kill two birds at once).

Thanks for the feedback guys! I do have a 750W Antec Earthwatts ATX 12v spec power supply, but it's only got about 130W on 3.3V and 5V lines, and I'd be a bit worried running an AXP setup on so little watts on those lines. I've tried really hard to source a nForce 2 board locally, but I just cannot find one in South Africa. I can get something like a Pentium IV, but I really want to have an AMD setup since I've only used AMD since 2001. So, in conclusion, I should go for the GeForce 7950GT and just try and get something with more juice?

Evert wrote:

Thanks for the feedback guys! I do have a 750W Antec Earthwatts ATX 12v spec power supply, but it's only got about 130W on 3.3V and 5V lines, and I'd be a bit worried running an AXP setup on so little watts on those lines. I've tried really hard to source a nForce 2 board locally, but I just cannot find one in South Africa. I can get something like a Pentium IV, but I really want to have an AMD setup since I've only used AMD since 2001. So, in conclusion, I should go for the GeForce 7950GT and just try and get something with more juice?

130W is not "so little" for a system from ~2003. 😊 And the more modern AthlonXP setups will lean on the 12V line, especially if you go with something like GF7950. You should be fine as long as you don't need 72 old hard drives or something else nuts. 😀

Okay, so I've decided to use a mail forwarding service so that I can circumvent the postal workers strike in my country. I managed to find a Soyo SY-KT600 motherboard in its original box for $35 from the USA. Hopefully Shipito will manage to get it to me. I also ordered the Winfast GeForce 7950GT from Amazon. I'm still a litle worried about the power supply, but okay, let's hope the Antec EarthWatts EA-750 Green can handle it.

Evert wrote:

Okay, so I've decided to use a mail forwarding service so that I can circumvent the postal workers strike in my country. I managed to find a Soyo SY-KT600 motherboard in its original box for $35 from the USA. Hopefully Shipito will manage to get it to me. I also ordered the Winfast GeForce 7950GT from Amazon. I'm still a litle worried about the power supply, but okay, let's hope the Antec EarthWatts EA-750 Green can handle it.

Soyo SY-KT600?
Well......you'll have to recap that thing,due to being a rebranded ECS KT600-A board. I know that ECS uses plain HORRIBLE caps.

Well, I always look hard for an excuse to solder stuff. This one is brand new and hasn't been used before. So they're not going to explode immediately (hopefully).

Actually, during the Plague it wasn't unknown for the board caps to let rip on the first powerup. You might want to take precautions -- glasses for yourself, and camera rolling for the memories.

Haha, I'm sure it'll be fine.

pewpewpew wrote:

Actually, during the Plague it wasn't unknown for the board caps to let rip on the first powerup. You might want to take precautions -- glasses for yourself, and camera rolling for the memories.

No joke, I've had ECS boards actually burst into flames on start-up. Glasses isn't such a bad idea. 😊

So, to prepare myself for the Soyo motherboard, I've decided to replace the capacitors on my GA-7VM400M (Rev 1) motherboard. I drew myself a little map of the motherboard with the capacitor locations as well as their pedigrees (capacitance, voltage and diameter). This kept me busy for about 2 hours and I've established that I need the following:

15x 100uF 10V 6mm
20x 1000uF 6.3V 8mm
2x 1200uF 6.3V

and

7x 3300uF 6.3V.

I've found a decent local supplier, RS Electronics, and they sell a wide variety of different capacitors. From reading on this forum (as well as others) I've established that Rubycon, Nicichon, Sanyo and Panasonic capacitors are good. The problem is that I do not know which specific ones to pick for my budget. I know that it is okay if the rated voltage is higher than the original, but the capacitance must stay the same. Could someone please recommend some capacitors for me. I'm looking to spend about $30-$50 on replacements in total.

Edit:
I've compiled an Excel spreadsheet containing the details of some capacitors I am thinking of buying (including links to the product descriptions on the suppliers website). Please let me know what you guys think. It's going to cost about $55 (with shipping), but I believe in doing something right the first time.

A little update, my Soyo board arrived (pardon the quality of the photos):

Evert wrote:

So, to prepare myself for the Soyo motherboard, I've decided to replace the capacitors on my GA-7VM400M (Rev 1) motherboard. I d […]
Show full quote

So, to prepare myself for the Soyo motherboard, I've decided to replace the capacitors on my GA-7VM400M (Rev 1) motherboard. I drew myself a little map of the motherboard with the capacitor locations as well as their pedigrees (capacitance, voltage and diameter). This kept me busy for about 2 hours and I've established that I need the following:

15x 100uF 10V 6mm
20x 1000uF 6.3V 8mm
2x 1200uF 6.3V

and

7x 3300uF 6.3V.

I've found a decent local supplier, RS Electronics, and they sell a wide variety of different capacitors. From reading on this forum (as well as others) I've established that Rubycon, Nicichon, Sanyo and Panasonic capacitors are good. The problem is that I do not know which specific ones to pick for my budget. I know that it is okay if the rated voltage is higher than the original, but the capacitance must stay the same. Could someone please recommend some capacitors for me. I'm looking to spend about $30-$50 on replacements in total.

Edit:
I've compiled an Excel spreadsheet containing the details of some capacitors I am thinking of buying (including links to the product descriptions on the suppliers website). Please let me know what you guys think. It's going to cost about $55 (with shipping), but I believe in doing something right the first time.

Hi

normally not all capacitors on a mainboard get defective the same time or even ever. Typically all capacitors which are defective NOW, are of the same type and for the beginning I would focus on replacing only these as replacing capacitors on a multilayer circuit board is really NO fun and there is a good chance you could ruin it.

but as this reply comes a little late, I guess you've already ordered all caps 😁 which is not bad, I'd just kepp them as a reserve for the future.

So what I'd do is to replace all types of caps were at least one is already defective NOW. if there is a type of a cap (specs and vendor) where none of them is defective, I'd leave them in place.

regarding the soyo board I can't really tell you anything helpful - the only soyo board i ever had worked but that was from the Pentium 1 era. Elitegroup/ECS Boards on the other side were really catastrophic (apocalypse foreseeable). for the first start attempt I'd really not connect any unnessecary devices and cards to it and turn the case away from me.

I actually I haven't bought a single capacitor yet. I went out and bought myself a soldering station, some soldering wire, solder wick, a solder sucker and some flux paste and one of those educational PCB kits - a mono pre-amplifier (to get some practice in first). The 3300uF capacitors on my GA-7VM400M definitely need to be replaced since more than half of them are either bulged or burst. The Soyo SY-KT600 Dragon V2 that I bought has actually never been used, it's *brand new*. It was only switched on to see if it boots once. So, I can't really ascertain what the quality of the caps are.

good idea! having some experience under my belt the high temp solder on mobos sometimes STILL gives me troubles. my best tip is to dilute the mobo solder with leaded solder to help melt it easier in such situations. No leaded solder won't kill you but, a fume extractor is a good idea (sucks up the fumes)