The Radeon 9800 XT matches the build well imo: fastest AMD CPU of 2003 with fastest ATi GPU of 2003 - what's not to like?

Yep, great combo if you have it. Back in the day I ran my nForce2 board with a Geforce4Ti4200 - slightly slower than the 9800XT, but fast enough for any period-correct stuff.

Ok... Then my first draft looks like this:

Case: Jonsbo U4 ( because I intend to build without external drives)

Mobo and Processor: ( first post) already ordered and on the way

Cooling: Arctic Cooling Copper Silent 3

GPU: ATI 9800 XT

Sound: Audigy 2 ZS (have it)

120 GB SSD with SATA2IDE adapter (have it)

2GB RAM (have it)

Audigy 2 ZS is a nice card.
EAX 4.0 (?) and bonus IEEE1394 for the one percent who is actually going to use it. 😉

I remember RAM sticks with BH5 chips were popular back in those days, high clocks and low latencies.

I found a kit of 2GB OCZ - they have CL2 - Think that'll do the job well.

I was thinking about the PSU. Having a corsair vs350 lying around here... Do I need something more powerful?

Your motherboard (ECS N2U400-A) has the auxiliary 4-pin 12V connector for the CPU, which means it should be using the 12V rail to power the CPU. The 3200+ may have been power hungry for its day, but its 60-ish W of power usage are low by modern standards. That goes double for the 9800 XT, which also uses about 60 W. Even accounting for other components and ageing PSU capacitors, it should still be able to power such a system without problems, as long as it's otherwise in good condition.

frudi wrote on 2020-12-08, 23:35:

Your motherboard (ECS N2U400-A) has the auxiliary 4-pin 12V connector for the CPU, which means it should be using the 12V rail to power the CPU. The 3200+ may have been power hungry for its day, but its 60-ish W of power usage are low by modern standards. That goes double for the 9800 XT, which also uses about 60 W. Even accounting for other components and ageing PSU capacitors, it should still be able to power such a system without problems, as long as it's otherwise in good condition.

It is all new and unboxed... 😁

I have another question concerning the Mainboard... Is it able to boot from usb stick?

It's not being mentioned in the manual, or in the release notes for newer bios files so I wouldn't count on it.

Sometimes you can select the flashdrive as HD-1. (HD-0 being your primary hard disk.)

Maybe you're in luck, and the system recognizes the flashdrive as an 'other bootable device'.

Mmmmh... For I have not the time to assemble things at the moment I am limited to thinking... So let's assume usb boot doesn't work... That would compromise my plans to build without an external drive. Any ideas for workaround (except another MB)?
My first guess is to use a second "HDD".. therefore I would use an ide to sd adapter and put the XP setup on the sd card... Then select it as first boot device and change back after XP is installed. Would that do the job?
Maybe there is also a Software solution (Plop Bootmanager seem to need an optical drive to boot)

Why not installing XP from an optical drive while keep it temporarily hanging out from the side? Or am I thinking too simple here.

No that was an option I was thinking of too... But in case of a new installation is needed... I don't want to open the housing and connect the optical drive every time just to install XP... I hope I find the time to check everything out within the next few days... Parts are all here.

Lazar81 wrote on 2020-12-23, 12:59:

I have another question concerning the Mainboard... Is it able to boot from usb stick?

Have you even breadboard booted the motherboard with bare items to make sure it works ?

Lazar81 wrote on 2020-12-09, 12:14:

It is all new and unboxed... 😁

A new, never used old motherboard from 1997 does not mean it still works proper.
Just curious as have seen many assemble a good list of parts only to find out the board has issues when they finally try to build the system....
added: sorry had to edit my bad quotes

Horun wrote on 2020-12-25, 03:45:

Have you even breadboard booted the motherboard with bare items to make sure it works ?

Read Post #12

Horun wrote on 2020-12-25, 03:45:

A new, never used old motherboard from 1997 does not mean it still works proper.
Just curious as have seen many assemble a good list of parts only to find out the board has issues when they finally try to build the system....

Read Post #9

You misunderstood some things...

Well... I can report a first success... I assembled everything as I wished. Everything seems working good. I was a little bit angry when I opened the package of one of the two ordered copper silent 3 coolers. They were sold as new. You can imagine my puzzlement when I saw old rests of compound on one of them... But I cleaned it up and it runs like it should.

Unfortunately the board does not support usb flash drive boot. But I am on a way to bypass this... Will tell if it works.

Btw. M board has the revision number: 1.0A
I didn't find this specific number on the ecs website... There are only 1.0 and 1.0u ... Hope this doesn't mean anything negative. I will see.

plop boot utility on floppy to kick off (boot up) the installation from optical discs.

Hello again...
Looks like i found a way... After frustrating experiments with cf cards I went back to my flash drive ... I made a bootable with easy2boot ... After that I switched to usb hdd as first boot device and then activated keyboard/mouse USB support. This brought the solution... I will see how installation goes...

I meant name of this program called "plop".

Cheers,