If you want to mak out the video card, go with the higher clocked CPU (though the 450 would be more era-appropriate). The integrated sound should work nicely unless you really need the emu8k chip - in which case go with the awe64.

I would vote for the Coppermine 800mhz, onboard Yamaha sound, whichever case you like more and can match floppy and drives up to easier, and a 7200rpm drive. Access times and everything are just so much better on newer drives, it just makes loading games and such a better experience. As far as the PSU goes as long as it is a 200-250watter I would not worry about it. The Dell OEM's like Foxconn and such that I have ran into from that period are very well built, maybe pop it open and give it a once over first. Otherwise there is a guy on ebay that sells adapters to use standard power supplies with those proprietary pinout Dell motherboards.

Personally I would run for a Super Socket 8 machine with a Pentium Pro, but that's just me.

The CPU and GPU seem around alright, and if you have the cash, replace the motherboard and PSU, OEM parts have almost always been lower quality than enthusiast, power, or even entry user. Unless your buying a server, they were almost always built to the dime, and are intended to work with that system for it's specific lifetime. They work in a pinch, but I wouldn't trust it.

Aside from that I would stick with the rest, I suggest the white case, but again that's just me, the 80GB drive is not period accurate, but I would use a 20GB Quantum Fireball (I just happen to have it laying around, and it's my smallest drive currently not in any real use) Again, use what you got, don't go with the 5GB drive, I think it's a tad small, and if it's gonna die soon, I'd avoid it. The reason I say big drive is for stuff like 3D games which can sometimes be around 500MB.

I would also use the Coppermine CPU, it would be fine with the Voodoo3.

Take this all with the fact I have never done a Pentium 3 machine, nor even touched a Pentium 2 nor 3.

[quote="Ampera"
The CPU and GPU seem around alright, and if you have the cash, replace the motherboard and PSU, OEM parts have almost always been lower quality than enthusiast, power, or even entry user. Unless your buying a server, they were almost always built to the dime, and are intended to work with that system for it's specific lifetime. They work in a pinch, but I wouldn't trust it.
Take this all with the fact I have never done a Pentium 3 machine, nor even touched a Pentium 2 nor 3.[/quote] Normally I would agree with you, but the Dell systems of this era use Intel manufactured motherboards with a proprietary pinout, other than that they are rock solid and even use good capacitors, unlike stuff from Abit from this period 😀

I'd go with the coppermine as well. I would say that you should consider going to a 1ghz as they aren't expensive but honestly You might squeeze a few more frames out of something faster then that but not much. If you ever get a Voodoo5 then you will either want a Tualatin or a Athlon XP system though..IMO.

What are you talking about? I have a Socket A ABIT board that is my best motherboard. It even has rare IDE RAID with support for up to 8 drives, 4 RAID 4 EIDE. The caps are still perfect with only one slight bulge (I can replace if if need be) anywhere on the board.

I seriously need to get that machine together, it's a decent XP gaming system.

Abit was pretty notorious for using bad caps. Hit up badcaps.net if you dont take my word for it. Great board manufacturer but the cap plague hit them hard.

One more vote for the Coppermine 800.

I have 2 AGP Voodoo 3s in 2 rigs with similar CPUs and my experiences were pretty good actually.

Both should have somewhat similar power draws as well.

I'd only pick the Katmai if you want to specifically build a Katmai rig.

Ampera wrote:

Personally I would run for a Super Socket 8 machine with a Pentium Pro, but that's just me.

You mean Socket 8? The only CPU socket that came with a super variant is Socket 7.

Hmm...Super Socket 8 does have a nice ring to it 😁
And we kinda already do have a ss8, it's called s370 🤣

ODwilly wrote:

Abit was pretty notorious for using bad caps. Hit up badcaps.net if you dont take my word for it. Great board manufacturer but the cap plague hit them hard.

only p2/3 era stuff, and that's easy to fix, especially considering Abit board performance / features compared to the competition. Back in the day, when it came to OC and stability on this platform, Abit was king.

Abit socket A / 478 stuff is pretty much flawless.

kanecvr wrote:

ODwilly wrote:

Abit was pretty notorious for using bad caps. Hit up badcaps.net if you dont take my word for it. Great board manufacturer but the cap plague hit them hard.

only p2/3 era stuff, and that's easy to fix, especially considering Abit board performance / features compared to the competition. Back in the day, when it came to OC and stability on this platform, Abit was king.

Abit socket A / 478 stuff is pretty much flawless.

Agreed. Just saying that if you want a flawless, no non-sense, rock solid experience that Intel OEM boards really cant be beat for Slot 1 or Socket 370 since Keenmaster already has one on hand in the form of his Dell board.

That motherboard can go to 1Ghz but doesn't offer that much over 800Mhz so in effect you will have one fast BX based glide box.

The on-board sound wont work in real dos, but as you said sounds real nice if your ok with playing dos games from within windows (and 800Mhz is plenty fast to do this)

HDD, go new! Why limit yourself to 5GB? Is that even enough space to install all the games you want? Don't go crazy though! 120GB is the max

The original PSU should be able to handle whatever you plan for this system, This wasn't Dell's budget range and left plenty of headroom
I would still get the ATX adaptor ODwilly mentions though. Just in case the power supply dies (Every PSU will eventually) Unless your up to repairing them yourself, and can only imagine the adaptors becoming harder to get.

You say your not using the original case. I am so haven't had to do this yet but here is how to connect up the front panal
http://www.roberthancock.com/dell/fpconn.htm

Finally Ignore the ignorance around being OEM, as I bet this will attract being right in the middle of the non ATX standard era of dell, everyone loves to go on about.
The simple fact is, yes its ashame Dell didn't go with standard ATX connector. Yet the matching power supplies are quality.
You get a True Intel BX motherboard, and even their retail motherboards lacked many options in BIOS.
The haters can keep hating, and we can get good hardware for what is 1 very stable/reliable motherboard for a good price 😀

Ampera wrote:

What are you talking about? I have a Socket A ABIT board that is my best motherboard. It even has rare IDE RAID with support for up to 8 drives, 4 RAID 4 EIDE. The caps are still perfect with only one slight bulge (I can replace if if need be) anywhere on the board.

We just replaced about 20 (90% popped) caps on a friend's 443bx Abit board. So yeah, they were crap. Most other manufacturers as well. All the HPs, Dells and Fujitsus I've seen from this era use proper caps and not one was bulged. Things improved greatly in the late Core2 and AM2 era (and Dell went crapcap around this time - optiplex 520, 745, 755 are all bad).

Alright! Thanks for all the advice, guys 😀

So I'm getting started, and here's the lineup so far (when I finish it I'll start a new thread with benchmarks, screenshots, and stuff 😀):

-Black and metal case (used to house a kind of junky dual core Pentium system - no more!)
-Dell OEM PSU (should work fine for now)
-Intel E139761 MB (Dell OEM, Intel 440BX-based)
-Intel Pentium III Coppermine 800 MHz CPU
-256 MB PC100 SDRAM (max MB can take is 100 MHz, otherwise I'd do 133)
-3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 AGP GPU
-3Com 3C905-TX network card (probably won't do anything with this yet, just put it in there because I had it)
-Creative Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold (will probably use this as the main sound card instead of the built-in Yamaha DS-XG
-PCI USB 4-port card
-Floppy drive (whatever model came with the case; it works)
-IDE DVD/CD drive (again, came with the case. Don't care as long as it works)
-80GB 7200RPM WD800 Western Digital Caviar IDE HDD

Pics of current progress:

The case. I think it looks kind of cool 😀

The insides 😁

Looks nice! That should be a fun system to play some games on. Pretty classy looking case, looks like an Inwin design. My only suggestion would be a low rpm 120mm exhaust fan to help that passive CPU breath a little. Probs not neccesary tho tbh.

Nice-looking build. Some Dell BX motherboards during that era used a proprietary PSU pinout. I have a Optiplex GX1 like this. You should keep the original OEM PSU matched to this motherboard until you find out for sure. I've read how people have destroyed a Dell motherboard by plugging in a standard ATX PSU. Your model may be just recent enough to be industry-standard in this respect.

@ODWilly: Yeah, I did put a fan on the case cover, just forgot to mention it 😀
@boxpressed: Yes, it's a special OEM system, has a separate plug in addition to the usual ATX thingy.
Well, right now the drive is formatting and taking forever! Hallelujah. More updates when I get it installed and running.

Sounds good.

Now to make a nice socket 8 system....

4 Socket anybody?

keenmaster486 wrote:

Alright! Thanks for all the advice, guys :) […]
Show full quote

Alright! Thanks for all the advice, guys 😀

So I'm getting started, and here's the lineup so far (when I finish it I'll start a new thread with benchmarks, screenshots, and stuff 😀):

-Black and metal case (used to house a kind of junky dual core Pentium system - no more!)
-Dell OEM PSU (should work fine for now)
-Intel E139761 MB (Dell OEM, Intel 440BX-based)
-Intel Pentium III Coppermine 800 MHz CPU
-256 MB PC100 SDRAM (max MB can take is 100 MHz, otherwise I'd do 133)
-3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 AGP GPU
-3Com 3C905-TX network card (probably won't do anything with this yet, just put it in there because I had it)
-Creative Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold (will probably use this as the main sound card instead of the built-in Yamaha DS-XG
-PCI USB 4-port card
-Floppy drive (whatever model came with the case; it works)
-IDE DVD/CD drive (again, came with the case. Don't care as long as it works)
-80GB 7200RPM WD800 Western Digital Caviar IDE HDD

Pics of current progress:

The case. I think it looks kind of cool 😀

IMG_0795.JPG

The insides 😁

FullSizeRender.jpg

I had the exact same thought as ODwilly about the slow case fan.

Btw, you could use PC-133 SDRAM in a BX if you wanted to and run it at 100MHz and often you can run it at CL2 instead of CL3 as a bonus.
Only extra thing you'd need to keep in mind is that BX can't effectively use higher density chips (max is 16 chips for a total of 256MB/memory module, it will report only half or less of the total amount of memory of that particular memory module...or maybe cause other odd stuff).

It won't cause an immensely faster system, but if it's just a few mouse clicks inside the BIOS and it won't hurt, why not?

I've often used higher-binned memory modules and had it run at lower speed and lower latencies.

And I think your case looks kinda cool as well 😀
The front bezel looks kinda a bit....hypnotizing or something 🤣