swaaye wrote:Evert wrote:That's easier said than done. I had to wait almost 4 months before I finally found NOS Soyo SY-KT600 boards, which come with horrible Evercon capacitors. You very seldom find high-end nForce 2 Ultra 400 boards on eBay and the ones you do find have been overclocked to hell and suffer from capacitor plague. The only reason to buy a Socket A board is if you want to build a high-end VIA KT133/KT133A system. You're better off building a Socket 754 / Socket 939 system for that era. Something as cheap as a Sempron 3400+ performs on par with a XP 3200+ and you can use modern power supplies and heatsinks on them as well. A lot less hassle.
Yep. Though KT333 is nice too because it's a lot faster than KT133A and can still run 3.3v AGP cards.
But you aren't going to convince people to leave Socket A behind if they still have the nostalgia. Trust me on this. We have threads once per week for years. 😀 Phil seems to want to document absolutely everything so there's that aspect as well.
No need to preach to the choir. I have my fair share of Socket A PCs myself and I love the platform despite its quirks. After building a couple of later Socket A platforms (KT600/nForce 2 era) I've just come to the conclusion that Socket 754 is a much better choice for this period. But you are right, KT333 is definitely a sweet spot of sorts. You really have to put a lot of thought into these builds too, especially when it comes to finding a power supply. I've pretty much given up, since it will cost a fortune to import Enermax and FSP units from eBay to South Africa. The only "cost" effective solution for me is to just buy the ATNG-built StarTech units. From what I can gather, they're not a bad OEM, but they make questionable choices when it comes to some parts and there's a concerning number of comments on Amazon and Newegg about StarTech units blowing up or dying after 3-5 years. But I'm pretty sure they just use CapXon capacitors or something even more horrible so that the PSUs die on purpose.
Edit: To get back on topic, I can highly recommend Antec's power supplies, provided that you buy the variety built by SeaSonic and Delta. The Delta ones have some of the most beautiful soldering you will ever see. They take a lot of pride in their workmanship. Unfortunately, there are a lot of CWT-built units doing the rounds and Antec's insistance on making you buy a new power supply every 3-5 years has led to them making some questionable choices for capacitors. I have an Antec HE-550 which still works (bought it in 2006) and it's still extremely quiet. I am a bit concern about the secondary capacitors though and I need to make new modular cables for it, since they were thrown away when I gave my Opteron 165 computer to my grandparents.
