I've built some new-old stock PC's in the past, but never one targeted at the DX6/DX7 era of Windows 98 gaming. After many hours of searching on ebay, I discovered that this is no easy task, at least not with all new-old stock parts and not paying an arm and a leg. But here goes...

Motherboard
My search consisted of Socket 370, Slots A, B, 1, and 2, as well as Socket A, and some of the more obscure server sockets of the era. What I found was server boards in new condition are virtually impossible to find (let alone at a decent price), and of the Socket A stuff out there, much of it is rated poorly with regards to quality control. I ultimately settled on Socket 370, and here I found that boards with AGP slots are surprisingly uncommon. The board I ended up going with is made by DFI. Looks like they made industrial-grade motherboards at the time, so I'm hoping the quality is good.

The board only has one PCI slot on it, but it does have a 15-pin gameport onboard, so I can use the PCI for a video card and settle for the onboard audio (SoundMax). It has only 2 USB ports but I'll use the onboard header to add 2 more. Form Factor is Flex-ATX. Chipset is Intel 810E.

CPU
Pentium III processors aren't all that difficult to find new at decent prices. This board supports P3s up to Coppermine core and also Celerons. Going with a 933 MHZ Coppermine P3.

Video
This was a tough one. I wanted something at least GeForce2 or later in PCI, and there's just not much to pick from. GeForce cards (at least new) are rather scarce, and the workstation variants are all AGP. Settled on a Radeon 7500 w/64MB DDR ram. I know the nVidia cards are generally favored over the Radeons, but from what I gather this card benchmarks somewhere between a GeForce2 and GeForce3, which I figure is good enough for dx6/dx7-era games.

Everything else
-Case - Apex microAtx Case w/300-watt power supply. I've used these cases before and they're very easy to work with, plus the quality is on the higher side.

-Hard Drive - HyperDisk 32GB 40-pin IDE disk-on-module. I love these things. Solid State hard drive performance in such a small space (plugs directly into the IDE port). In computers I've built and sold online, I've used over 70 HyperDisk drives now and have yet to see a single one DOA or fail.

-RAM - PC100, Micron 256MB, 2 sticks (512 MB total)

-Optical Drive - found an older HL-branded drive with IDE connector, 4-pin audio output (for CD audio) and a volume control/headphone jack on the front. Not really necessary, but this drive feels much more era-correct than anything newer.

-Floppy Drive - Decided to include one. Going with a Dell-branded drive

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Are there any pitfalls I should be aware of before purchasing all my parts? In particular, with the Intel 810E chipset and the Radeon 7500 video card? And will the SoundMax onboard audio give me any issues? Right now I can't figure out exactly what the audio chip is, other than it uses SoundMax drivers.