Did you see this post? New old-stock white ATX case in action,
Cyrix MII-433GP Build

Someone is still selling them new in box,
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/320687282249

My personal opinion is that anything socket 370 and older needs to be in a white/beige case.

For motherboard recommendations, it really depends on if you plan on going dual or staying single.

Thanks for the reply & info 😀

That case fits most of my needs, and it seems cheap too ($14) but the shipping from Canada to the USA might be expensive (it doesn't give me a price when I put in my zip code for some odd reason).

Also, I plan on staying with a single CPU since Windows 9x doesn't use the second CPU.

Also, does anybody know of anyway to make custom case badges/stickers? Or is there a place online that can make them?

Sounds like a cool build! I have a very similar system with a 600MHz P3, 384MB of RAM, Rage 128GL, SB Live, and Voodoo2 SLI, and it's serving me well.

I've been using these power supplies for my retro builds and for replacements for bad OEM units for quite awhile.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … N82E16817182006
They have very good reviews on Newegg, and have been working well for me. They seem to be quite a bit better than other units at that price level, though admittedly I did have one fail in a PC I built for my dad (I'm not sure how many I've bought, I think between 6 to 8 ).

As for the case badge, one idea would be to print the badge out on glossy photo paper and attach it using double-sided tape.

I had a Rosewill RV400 die recently after a few years of reliable service. Also had a similar FSP 400W die. Both were $45 or so. I know of a few several-year-old FSP 400/450s working fine still though. It's partly luck of the draw I think with PSUs.

I try to buy PSUs that JonnyGuru likes. But you don't usually see him happy with units that sell under $50.

@CapnCrunch53 Thanks for the recommendation 😀 sounds like a very good product, it even has the two 4-pin floppy power connectors for the 1.44MB floppy drive and the Live! Drive, and the price is excellent. I'll be sure to keep it in mind when I still assembling the PC ^.^

For the motherboard, what is the best chipset to use? I've heard the Intel 440BX is a good choice, but I'm curious about it's overclocking abilities :3 any information is gladly accepted 😀

I really only build dual socket 370 and dual slot 1 builds because these systems are still very usable for general browsing, video playback, adobe flash work, utube, CAD, etc.

For dual slot 1 boxes, I recommend a Dell Precision Workstation 410. It works with up to dual 850's fine and is based on the Intel 440BX chipset. The Tyan S1598C may also make for a good substitute, but I haven't tested this yet. This Dell system has worked reliably since Dec. 1998 on a continually-on basis. I bought it new and customised from Dell back in Dec. 1998 for $4100 and was worth evey penny. It originally had 400 MHz chips in it, but I upgraded them a few years back to dual 850 MHz units for next to nothing. I still use the integrated Ultra2-LVD SCSI with a Seagate 73 GB ultra320 drive. For storage and backup of personal files (including video and photo), I added 5 TB of SATA storage a few years ago. I have used it with an NVIDIA MX440 and FX5200 and am going to try to plop in an NVIDIA 6200 I got for $9. The Workstation 410 has my favourite case of all time - easy snap on/off and still solid and sexy looking. It holds 4 hardrives. The power supply is original and has never failed.

For dual socket 370, I personally recommend a relatively inexpensive Intel SAI2 motherboard. It houses the Intel ServerSet III LE chipset and natively supports Tualatin III-S 512KB 1.4GHz chips. It is a very stable board and comes with 2 PCI-X slots for fast SCSI/SATA and 1 GB ethernet. The only draw-back is no AGP slot, but a PCI NVIDIA 6200 works beautifully.

The other two dual socket 370's which seem to be good from the specifications are,

SuperMicro P3TDE6
Serverset III HE chipset
Built-in Ultra160 SCSI
2X AGP
6 PCI-X slots, 3.3V and 5.0V
Native support for Tualatin III-S 512KB 1.4GHz chips

SuperMicro P3TDDE
VIA Apollo Pro 266T
4X AGP
NO PCI-X
Native support for Tualatin III-S 512KB 1.4GHz chips

I've been meaning to get around to testing these boards, but would be reluctant to replace my existing Precision Workstation 410 or Intel SAI2 setup with these fancy boards because my existing machines are proven rock solid for what I use them for.

For non-dual socket 370's, I have two boards that I sourced after reading reviews some time ago. They are the Gigabyte GA-6VX7-4X (VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset) and Asus TUSL2-C (Intel 815EP chipset). These two boards are popular with overclockers. The drawback of the 815EP is you can only use up to 512 MB of RAM. I beleive both boards support AGP 4X. I only sourced these boards for the purpose of an eventual VIA C3 build, which I plan on calling something like "The Last Cyrix", or "The Last Winchip." These are the only two boards I see any substantial benchmark results on using a VIA C3. I have two VIA 1.2 GHz chips I plan on putting in there.

Best of luck!

That sounds like an interesting build, I don't think I've ever seen benchmarks for the C3, so good luck with that 😀

I'll look into the VIA Apollo Pro 133 and the Intel 815EP chipset, I'll also check out the Gigabyte GA-6VX7-4X and the ASUS TUSL2-C boards.

I also wondered how to cool all the components, which on a cheapo case is quite difficult due to the lack of options, but I was snooping around on the interwebs and found this:
http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=226

Even though it's an outdated product,I've seen a couple stores still selling them, along with a couple people on Ebay. I think it would at least help keep the Voodoo II cards and the Riva TNT cooled down, although the stock Zalman fan that's included could be a problem due to it's thinkness, so maybe a slim 92mm fan would be good.

These also made my short-list at the time of sourcing,

MSI-694D (dual socket 370)
ASUS TUV4X (single socket 370)
Elitegroup P6S5AT (single socket 370)

but I decided it would be safer to get boards which specifically had mention of the VIA C3 in the manuals or in online benchmarking. I wanted one Intel and one VIA chipset board for testing, and so I settled with the TUSL2-C and GA-6VX7-4X.

For single CPU slot 1 boards, my ASUS P3V4X has held up nicely with a 1GHz/133 PIII, but there are a few other good ones out there as well.

For case cooling of PIII's, I find the a single 92 or 80 mm exhaust fan is sufficient. For my dual Tualatin III-S 1.4 GHz box, I have been using relatively slow front and rear 80 mm fans without issues for many years. I find completely parallel heatsink-to-CPU placement is the most critical element in proper CPU cooling, generally more so than case fans.

The downside of the mentioned mainboards is that they generally have no ISA slots, so sound in DOS will be troublesome. If DOS sound matters one should stick to i440BX or earlier. Some VIA Apollo Pro boards retain one ISA slot too.

gerwin wrote:

The downside of the mentioned mainboards is that they generally have no ISA slots, so sound in DOS will be troublesome. If DOS sound matters one should stick to i440BX or earlier. Some VIA Apollo Pro boards retain one ISA slot too.

Of the boards mentioned above, these have one 16-bit ISA slot,

Asus P3V4X - Slot 1 - VIA Apollo Pro133A Chipset - 1 ISA slot
Gigabyte GA-6VX7-4X - Socket 370 - VIA Apollo Pro133A Chipset - 1 ISA slot
Dell Precision Workstation 410 - Dual Slot 1 - Intel 440BX Chipset - 1 ISA slot

One more board I forgot to mention if you're into dual slot 1's,
Tyan Tiger100 - S1832DL - Dual Slot 1 - Intel 440BX Chipset - 2 ISA slots

For all dual-CPU motherboards, you can always put a CPU terminator in the second CPU socket and it can be treated as a single processor board.

I am curious, is there much desire to play DOS games on such a fast socket 370? I figured DOS games were better suited to socket 7's, 486's, and 386's (depending on the game). Can a 1.4 GHz Tualatin socket 370 be slowed down to 386/486 speeds?

feipoa wrote:

Of the boards mentioned above, these have one 16-bit ISA slot

Good to know 😀

feipoa wrote:

I am curious, is there much desire to play DOS games on such a fast socket 370?

Dunno, It was mentioned in the first post.

feipoa wrote:

I figured DOS games were better suited to socket 7's, 486's, and 386's (depending on the game). Can a 1.4 GHz Tualatin socket 370 be slowed down to 386/486 speeds?

DOS SVGA 3D games match well with Pentium II's. There are ways to slowdown PII/PIII's, but it remains troublesome. Disabling L1 (very slow), Throttle software, FSB speed scaling, rare CPU's with free multipliers...

I don't plan on running any DOS games beforce ~1992/1993ish (because I don't have any DOS games from before then 🤣), although I'm thinking about getting more than one hard drive and have maybe DOS/Win3.11 on one disk, and Windows 98 on the other.

For the motherboard, I looked up that Tyan Tiger 100 on Tyan's website:
http://www.tyan.com/archive/products/html/tiger100.html

This board does support the Slot 1 Pentium III Coppermine chips (600MHz - 850MHz), but only the revision F chips. Which from what I've seen, aren't very common. But If was to go with this board, I would just get a single CPU and then a terminator for the second slot. Seems like a nice board, I bookmarked the product's webpage. Although I would have to find some different RAM to work with this board, I think I could find something somewhere for a decent price.

Thanks for the info 😀

You mean revision F mainboards. Coppermine support is usually a voltage regulator issue.

Hmm, maybe I shouldn't get a Coppermine, would a Katmai 500MHz Pentium III would be good enough to take advantage of two Voodoo IIs? If it is, I'll go with that 😀

Even a k6/3 can take advantage of v2 sli - you would be able to playglquake at 1024x768 fine for example - it just won't max them out.