The PSU is more than powerful enough! It is only in the last years with powerful graphic cards that you need more juice, and even then most of it is just marked ploys for you as consumer to buy more expensive PSU's.

Other than that it is a nice SS7 ATX system! Upgrading to a PIII or Athlon will mean even more problems in DOS. The Socket 7 systems are probably the most versatile as it gets when it comes to playing games from a huge timespan.

excellent case. plenty of room in there too.

I have an Epox 58MVP3C motherboard. very stable.

vetz wrote:

The PSU is more than powerful enough! It is only in the last years with powerful graphic cards that you need more juice, and even then most of it is just marked ploys for you as consumer to buy more expensive PSU's.

Other than that it is a nice SS7 ATX system! Upgrading to a PIII or Athlon will mean even more problems in DOS. The Socket 7 systems are probably the most versatile as it gets when it comes to playing games from a huge timespan.

that's kind of the dilemma, from my collection , the maximum this PC will run decently is something along the lines of Quake 3, MDK2 , etc after that it kind of goes down the drain (apart from a few exceptions like Warcraft 3 , which is surprisingly playable), though for whatever reason Half Life has its occasional frame rate issues , K6 woes I guess.

on the other hand, most games post 2000 work perfectly fine on a modern system ,

rgart wrote:

excellent case. plenty of room in there too.

I have an Epox 58MVP3C motherboard. very stable.

I do like the case, if only I could get the logo off it, and maybe paint it , but I might end up causing more damage than good.

Nice build. 😁 It kind of reminds me of this Pentium Ii box I have sitting in storage.

Darkman wrote:

rgart wrote:

excellent case. plenty of room in there too.

I have an Epox 58MVP3C motherboard. very stable.

I do like the case, if only I could get the logo off it, and maybe paint it , but I might end up causing more damage than good.

I'd keep the case as it is, Mesh are no longer going as real pc maker, they are just an online box shifter with these days using off the shelf hardware. So it's a proper retro case that your unlikely to find again, I'd like one of these or a Panrix case for my upcoming retro system 😀

Agreed, I was surprised to read you want to remove the badge/logo

rgart wrote:

Agreed, I was surprised to read you want to remove the badge/logo

its not a bad case by any means , certainly better than the somewhat dull case I had for my PC at the time (wish I kept that PC), its just the brand itself doesn't mean that much to me.

the case I can live with , its my dilemma over whether to upgrade it to a Slot 1/A machine (even a Katmai), ie, do I want better performance in later games, or better compatibility with the DOS games.
Although to be fair to the K6-3 , the performance in 3D games isn't as bad as some reviews of the time lead one to believe.

Darkman wrote:

... 250W PSU ... ... 1) would the PSU be enough

Way overkill, I have a similar SS7 system and the Kill-a-watt has never shown even a 100W draw from the wall (44W idling, 80W burning).

At one time fairly recently I had something very similar - same board, same cpu, same sound card, same video card!

However, I replaced it with an Asus CUBX running a 650-MHz pentium III 😉

ncmark wrote:

At one time fairly recently I had something very similar - same board, same cpu, same sound card, same video card!

However, I replaced it with an Asus CUBX running a 650-MHz pentium III 😉

yes , Im thinking of doing the same, a Katmai PIII should do the trick , since it should give me a decent boost in 3D performance , while being fairly similar to the K6-III in other things, older DOS games and Windows 2D games included.

Something I noticed about Epox boards (or at least mine) was capacitors of questionable quality - the board would only work with certain power supplies

IMHO a pentium III is a much better choice than k6-2 or K6-3

Something else to keep in mind if you are going to run windows at all is that the wave effects for the awe64 requires an actual pentium processor (at least I think I am right about that)

ncmark wrote:

Something I noticed about Epox boards (or at least mine) was capacitors of questionable quality - the board would only work with certain power supplies

IMHO a pentium III is a much better choice than k6-2 or K6-3

Something else to keep in mind if you are going to run windows at all is that the wave effects for the awe64 requires an actual pentium processor (at least I think I am right about that)

well, I looked around and managed to find a PIII 450Mhz (so a Katmai) , along with an Abit BX6 (so a 440BX slot 1), for a combined price of £5 , now I just have to wait for it to get here, in one piece hopefully.

I'm also building a slot 1 pc,bx board,pentium III 450mhz,would have prefered a p II at 450 mhz,but they harder to find and from what i read the 2 processors are almost identical.

Nahkri wrote:

I'm also building a slot 1 pc,bx board,pentium III 450mhz,would have prefered a p II at 450 mhz,but they harder to find and from what i read the 2 processors are almost identical.

PIII Katmai is basically just a PII with some extras like SSE, hence why the Athlon was beating it on most tests at the time (the Athlon and XP series were great, I had an Athlon XP until early 2008, and it ran just about anything I threw at it decently)

its quite a shame the K6-3 450 performs more like a PII 233 or 267 when it comes to 3D apps unless there were specific 3Dnow enhancements like in Quake 2 (Deus Ex or Alice were running at 10fps most of the time, no matter the detail or resolution), for 2D work it's fantastic.

I think deus ex and alice are a bit too much for the k6 platform and voodoo 3,i remeber playing those games on a socket A system,with geforce 2 generation videocard.
From what i read here The Ultimate 686 Benchmark Comparison it's performance is more like a P II at 350-400,without 3D now.

Nahkri wrote:

I think deus ex and alice are a bit too much for the k6 platform and voodoo 3,i remeber playing those games on a socket A system,with geforce 2 generation videocard.
From what i read here The Ultimate 686 Benchmark Comparison it's performance is more like a P II at 350-400,without 3D now.

I don't think its a GPU issue, if it was, reducing the resolution or detail would increase the frame rate , in neither case did the frame rate improve, including Deus Ex which has Glide support (its the unreal engine).

now , of course a better video card would help , but keep in mind, the Voodoo 3 was still a common card in 2000 (as were cards like the TNT2, Rage 128 or even the Voodoo 2), as was the Pentium II (heck alot of people were still using Pentium 166 and such) the games should at least be playable with those cards on at least low settings and resolution

though mysteriously , Emperor Battle For Dune was perfectly playable on medium settings, and even Warcraft 3 was playable.

but we will see once I get it, it should be interesting to see. (and provided it works properly)