ODwilly wrote:

I lucked out and 2/3 of my socket 370 boards use high quality caps. One is Dell and the other is an Asus board.

Dell, Supermicro and Intel went with all Japanese caps before the first wave of the capacitor plague hit.
Dell and Intel (and many others) took it in the shorts a little later when Nichicon (a Jap brand) screwed up some of their caps.
Call that second wave I guess?
At that time Supermicro was using Sanyo caps almost exclusively so they didn't have many (if any) affected boards.
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Asus -usually- used bad caps then but some of their mucho expensive models got Rubycon or similar.
Probably due to production supply shortages sometimes the lesser Asus boards got Rubycon too, but that wasn't consistent and was luck of the draw.
I don't remember the real model but I remember looking at an ASUS (say) XYZ-Deluxe and comparing to their XYZ-(non Deluxe).
The Deluxe had Rubycons and the standard had OST. The Deluxe also cost like $100 more.
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Abit and Gigabyte were fairly quick in switching to all Jap caps (Asus never did) but they got screwed right after with the Nichicon fiasco.
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alexanrs wrote:

firage wrote:

440BX is basically it if you want an Intel chipset with ISA. Some of them have Tualatin modified BIOS's available, pin mod required.

Beware the OCed AGP bus.
I'd favour VIA boards.... something like an ASUS CUV4X + pinmodded Tually should be fine.

The 89MHz AGP bus was a matter of reality around 2000, no big deal. Helps with the gap between 2X and 4X AGP bandwidth, too.

For sure the price range of the boards make a huge difference in quality of caps. My Asus board is a CUV-4XD and Revision 1.03, looks like all Nichicon caps and a couple oddball yellow caps as well. Oh just to note that the 370 board I have with bad caps is a very unstable and random Abit VP-6 that is not in use. Also have a kx7-333 that had two bad Nichicon caps oddly enough

ODwilly wrote:

For sure the price range of the boards make a huge difference in quality of caps. My Asus board is a CUV-4XD and Revision 1.03, looks like all Nichicon caps and a couple oddball yellow caps as well. Oh just to note that the 370 board I have with bad caps is a very unstable and random Abit VP-6 that is not in use. Also have a kx7-333 that had two bad Nichicon caps oddly enough

Nichicon HM and HN series produced from 2001 through 2004 were defective due to a manufacturing screw-up.
Also their VR series sometimes shows up on motherboards. That's an 85˚C rated cap. Shouldn't really be used on motherboards.

Excess heat will kill any cap regardless of brand.
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Alright, I went ahead and purchased the GA-6VTXE. What is a good heatsink for a P3 Tualatin?

Something like this would be overkill/perfect 😀 http://www.ebay.com/itm/Cooler-Master-X-Dream … 3QAAOSwU~FWDbCb

MrEWhite wrote:

Alright, I went ahead and purchased the GA-6VTXE. What is a good heatsink for a P3 Tualatin?

They max out at 32.2 watts TDP so about 1/2 a run of the mill C2D or 1.6 times a K6-2 500.
The 1100MHz Coppermine is actually more at 33 watts and some of the Coppermine-T's were over 38 watts.
Are you confused yet? I'm kind of rambling...
They don't really need that much but more is better and it's easy to get more with socket 370. Usually plenty of room.
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Make sure you don't get one with the Coppermine groove.
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Get a decent socket A heatsink. As long as it fits, anything able to handle an Athlon should not break a sweat with a humble P3, specially Athlon XP heatsinks, as most Athlon XP models were well over 60W.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Thermaltake-TR2-M3-CP … %3D321937316662 here is another good one, copper base thermaltake new in the box

Application: Tualatin 2.0 GHz...
What?!

alexanrs wrote:

Application: Tualatin 2.0 GHz...
What?!

Nice catch.

ODwilly wrote:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Thermaltake-TR2-M3-CP … %3D321937316662 here is another good one, copper base thermaltake new in the box

I don't like heatsinks with a copper plate screwed on.
If it's not made to exacting tolerances the junction between the copper and aluminum can end up being a thermal barrier.
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Going by stock Intel heatsinks included with Xeons copper isn't needed until TDP hits 85 watts anyway.
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ODwilly wrote:

Something like this would be overkill/perfect 😀 http://www.ebay.com/itm/Cooler-Master-X-Dream … 3QAAOSwU~FWDbCb

I bought dis, oh lawdy. I'm thinking of getting a new PSU too. My current one is from around 2004, from Dell. But it's still going strong. Got all the parts for my first Socket 370 rig at this point. I may get a new PSU though. I am a few bucks over my budget as of now though so... 🤣

MrEWhite wrote:

I have no soldering tools so... yeah... and here is a pic of the board http://i.imgur.com/WP15jK2.jpg […]
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I have no soldering tools so... yeah...
and here is a pic of the board

Odd to see the socket isn't dyed blue.

PCBONEZ wrote:

Make sure you don't get one with the Coppermine groove.
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What's a Coppermine groove?

MrEWhite wrote:

Alright, I went ahead and purchased the GA-6VTXE. What is a good heatsink for a P3 Tualatin?

To me, any cooler that was made for sA CPU's and won't actually break the socket tabs due to the clip of the cooler applying too much pressure caused to the increased height of the Tualatin heat spreader.
For Tualatin (and Coppermine-T) I've actually had the best results by using a stock Athlon XP HSF with 3-way clip which I bend a bit so the amount of pressure put on the socket tabs isn't as high. I've also used stock Intel s370 heat sinks with Athlon XP clips I think?

MrEWhite wrote:

I bought dis, oh lawdy. I'm thinking of getting a new PSU too. My current one is from around 2004, from Dell. But it's still going strong. Got all the parts for my first Socket 370 rig at this point. I may get a new PSU though. I am a few bucks over my budget as of now though so... 🤣

Dell doesn't build PSUs. They OEM them from someone else and they use a number of different builders even for one model of PC.
Some are junk. Some are awesome. On average Dell PSUs are better than most.
If you can give me the numbers off of it I can probably figure out who actually built it.
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Tetrium wrote:

PCBONEZ wrote:

Make sure you don't get one with the Coppermine groove.
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What's a Coppermine groove?

It's a groove on a heatsink that fits a coppermine.
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PCBONEZ wrote:

Dell doesn't build PSUs. They OEM them from someone else and they use a number of different builders even for one model of PC. S […]
Show full quote

MrEWhite wrote:

I bought dis, oh lawdy. I'm thinking of getting a new PSU too. My current one is from around 2004, from Dell. But it's still going strong. Got all the parts for my first Socket 370 rig at this point. I may get a new PSU though. I am a few bucks over my budget as of now though so... 🤣

Dell doesn't build PSUs. They OEM them from someone else and they use a number of different builders even for one model of PC.
Some are junk. Some are awesome. On average Dell PSUs are better than most.
If you can give me the numbers off of it I can probably figure out who actually built it.
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The numbers on it is CN-0H2678. Nice and heavy PSU too.

Looks like it might be a Delta.

Yes I was teasing....
Before the P3's with the large heat spreader showed up some companies were putting a groove on the CPU side of their heatsinks that just barely fit over the small spreader on the coppermines. I think their idea was to use the spreader + groove to help keep the heatsink centered over the CPU.
Problem is it makes them useless for about anything except coppermines.
They still show up for sale now and then so if you aren't paying attention you can end up with a heatsink that won't work. Least not well.
I couldn't find a pic but I have a box with about 30 of them in it out in store room so I'll try to get a photo to show tomorrow.
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MrEWhite wrote:

PCBONEZ wrote:

Dell doesn't build PSUs. They OEM them from someone else and they use a number of different builders even for one model of PC. S […]
Show full quote

MrEWhite wrote:

I bought dis, oh lawdy. I'm thinking of getting a new PSU too. My current one is from around 2004, from Dell. But it's still going strong. Got all the parts for my first Socket 370 rig at this point. I may get a new PSU though. I am a few bucks over my budget as of now though so... 🤣

Dell doesn't build PSUs. They OEM them from someone else and they use a number of different builders even for one model of PC.
Some are junk. Some are awesome. On average Dell PSUs are better than most.
If you can give me the numbers off of it I can probably figure out who actually built it.
.

The numbers on it is CN-0H2678. Nice and heavy PSU too.

CN-0H2678 is the Dell number which doesn't always give away the OEM.
Do you also see NPS-250KB ?