I'm planning to get a Corsair VS400 (5V@17A and 12V@32A, single rail)...

alvaro84 wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

20A 5V won't cut it.

Wait. The AN7 does have an ATX12V connector. It must diminish the need of a beefy 5V PSU.

I believe this was tested at some point and people found 12V connectors on Socket A motherboards did not really help much with 5V power draw? I may be misremembering though..

Nemo1985 wrote:

decided to buy a Gigabyte ga-7vt880-l, because seemd like the asus but with 4 pin connector. Too bad I just found it doesn't support the pci and agp fix

Let's be realistic here. Most likely you won't push it far beyond official 200mhz bus (there are PCI/AGP dividers for that) - 220 at best. You don't need fixed AGP/PCI clock for that.

Nemo1985 wrote:

a good price a Epox EP-8VTAI, it has pci\agp fix, it's very overclocking friendly and so on, but just 2 ddr memory slot

Why would you need more? That's enough for 2 gigs of RAM, which is an overkill for any Athlon XP system.

Here's a list of the 462 boards I have.. out of curiosity, are these good boards?

Gigabyte GA-7ZX
Gigabyte K7 Triton
ABIT AN7 Guru

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Nemo1985 wrote:

decided to buy a Gigabyte ga-7vt880-l, because seemd like the asus but with 4 pin connector. Too bad I just found it doesn't support the pci and agp fix

Let's be realistic here. Most likely you won't push it far beyond official 200mhz bus (there are PCI/AGP dividers for that) - 220 at best. You don't need fixed AGP/PCI clock for that..

With older Athlon cpu with lower fsb I can't overclock the bus anyway... so it would have been nice to have them.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Nemo1985 wrote:

a good price a Epox EP-8VTAI, it has pci\agp fix, it's very overclocking friendly and so on, but just 2 ddr memory slot

Why would you need more? That's enough for 2 gigs of RAM, which is an overkill for any Athlon XP system.

You are right.

KT333 chipset with 3.3v AGP so you can run a voodoo in there. MSI models like KT3 Ultra are fairly common and affordable. Note not every board with universal AGP slot actually supports 3.3v so be careful.

appiah4 wrote:

alvaro84 wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

20A 5V won't cut it.

Wait. The AN7 does have an ATX12V connector. It must diminish the need of a beefy 5V PSU.

I believe this was tested at some point and people found 12V connectors on Socket A motherboards did not really help much with 5V power draw? I may be misremembering though..

I'm planning using a Radeon Hd4650... From what I found, most of the problems everyone had was using GeForce 3/4 and Radeon 9000 series. These cards uses 5V.

Anyway... The first test I'll do will be with a Aerocool GT 500SG (500W, 22A 5V)... I'm looking for a Corsair CX450 (20A 5V, new, very pricey) or an Antec PP-412X from 2001 (400W, 40A 5V 🤣). The problem with Antec is its age... 17 years already...

appiah4 wrote:

alvaro84 wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

20A 5V won't cut it.

Wait. The AN7 does have an ATX12V connector. It must diminish the need of a beefy 5V PSU.

I believe this was tested at some point and people found 12V connectors on Socket A motherboards did not really help much with 5V power draw? I may be misremembering though..

It depends on the motherboard, however there are plenty of SA motherboards that run the CPU from the 12V rail.

Munx wrote:

It depends on the motherboard, however there are plenty of SA motherboards that run the CPU from the 12V rail.

Did you know something about the Abit AN7? Thanks 😀

I finally had time to test the Msi Kt3 ultra (with a 3000+ and radeon 9600 xt), but a weird thing happened.
I tried to use the PSU with highest 5v ampere.
I have those:

1Tagan 580w
23.3V 26a 85.8 watt 
35V 30a 150 watt
4max combined power 180w
5
6Tecnoware 550w
73.3V 24a 79.2 watt
85V 24a 120 watt
9max combined power 180w
10
11Seasonic 300w
123.3V 28a 92,4 watt
135V 30a 150 watt
14max combined power 180w (40a)

I tried the Seasonic 300w (SS-300GS) but a weird thing happened, after 2 seconds and without anything on screen the system was shutting down by himself.
So I tried the Seasonic and it worked like a charme.
Maybe 300 watt is not enough?
I know that all of them are suboptimal since they are newer but I've haven't been able to find anything older...

Check caps.

gdjacobs wrote:

Check caps.

Caps are perfect the issue could be the seasonic (but it works fine in a p4 rig)...

gdjacobs wrote:

Check caps.

True that ALWAYS on 00/05 hardware, and especially SocketA.

Nemo1985 wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

Check caps.

Caps are perfect the issue could be the seasonic (but it works fine in a p4 rig)...

Check caps on the PSU as well, especially output filter caps. The P4 rig doesn't put much load on the +5V rail, so it's a very different testing condition.

The Athlon should be well within the capabilities of the Seasonic. It's under performing for a reason.

While this may not be the "Best" socket A motherboard, this is still a decent board. Now restored with new polymer and electrolytic capacitors, hopefully this restored board will go on for a good long time!

Should be also noted, that many late motherboards like Abit AN7 or ASUS A7N8X does not have thermal diode to monitor Athlon Thunderbird temperature.

canthearu wrote:

While this may not be the "Best" socket A motherboard, this is still a decent board. Now restored with new polymer and electrolytic capacitors, hopefully this restored board will go on for a good long time!

It's indeed an important point: the best board is a working board.

I also agree with the other half: it's really not the ideal board, at least not for me. It's an oldschool SDRAM piece yet it doesn't have an ISA slot.

I have, on one side, the Abit NF7-S with ATX12V power and 400FSB with DDR, and the Abit KT7A on the other, which has an ISA slot and works well with DOS sound cards - but with performance bottlenecks from the limited FSB and the SDRAM.

The best (for me) would be a unicorn with both: high performance and extended CPU support from high FSB and DDR memory - and at least one ISA slot. But I'm fine with these two options too.

I'm still looking out for a KT333 board; I'm all set for KT133+ISA and NF2+Dual-DDR, now I need Universal AGP + DDR..

I'm still looking out for a KT333 board

There's plenty of that junk lying around, Perhaps not many cream of the crop boards, but enough decent ones.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

I'm still looking out for a KT333 board

There's plenty of that junk lying around, Perhaps not many cream of the crop boards, but enough decent ones.

All I come across here are KT400 and NF2 with the occasional KT600 in there, KT333 and KT133 are rather obacure..