VOGONS


My old Socket A systems

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First post, by RetroPC_King

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Collection of my old Socket A systems:

1.AMD Athlon XP 2600+ 1.917 GHz Barton with 512KB L2 cache and 333MHz FSB
ASUS A7V600-X MB
Leadtek WInfast A340 T 128MB AGP8X Nvidia GeForce FX 5200
Leadtek WInfast TV2000XP Expert TV Tuner
Some 1394 card with Agere FW323 chipset
512MB DDR400 Kingmax Super Ram (RED colored)
ASUS 16x DVD-ROM drive
LG DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo
Super Rack with 1.7GB Fujitsu ATA33 drive
40GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8
400W PowerLink PSU
Alps Floppy Drive
AMD Stock Cooler
Some ATX Grey case with blue LEDs (maybe Delux)

2.AMD Athlon XP 2500+ 1.833 GHz Barton with 512KB L2 cache and 333MHz FSB
ASUS A7N8X Deluxe rev2.0 MB
ASUS V9520 Magic 128MB AGP8X Nvidia GeForce FX 5200
256MB DDR400 Kingmax Super RAM (RED colored)
LG 16X DVD-RW
80GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.7
400W Rexpower PSU
Mistumi Floppy Drive
Some 80MM CPU cooler with aluminium frame
A case that is like Kobian KOB 115 computer case.

3.AMD Athlon XP 2200+ 1.8GHz Thoroughbred-B with 256KB L2 cache and 266MHz FSB
ASUS A7N8X-VM/400 MB
Integrated Geforce 4 MX video from nForce 2 IGP (64MB share)
256MB Sycron DDR400 RAM
LG 52X CD-ROM
40GB Western Digital Protege WD400
350W Powerlink PSU
Sony Floppy Drive
Speeze CPU Cooler
Some TARGA mini tower

4.AMD Sempron 2400+ 1.667GHz Thoroughbred-B with 256KB L2 cache and 333MHz FSB
ASUS A7V8X-X MB
Palit NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX440-AGP8X 64MB
256MB Sycron DDR333 RAM
LG DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo
40GB Excelstor HDD
400W Premier LC-B400ATX PSU
ALPS Floppy Drive
CoolitY CPU Cooler
A KOB 115-like computer case with Fast Data logo on it

Should I combine the pieces of these 4 Socket A PCs to make one nForce beast (for example swap the Motherboard of 1st Socket A system with the A7N8X Deluxe). It is worth to swap the VIA KT600 for nVidia Nforce 2 Ultra 400?

Reply 1 of 10, by Aragorn

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I guess it depends on your reasons for keeping all of them? In terms of usability i would personally take the best bits from all of them and combine them into one. But thats because i cant see any need for four very similar machines.

Reply 2 of 10, by RetroPC_King

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My collections, Of Course. I don't dispose them.

Reply 3 of 10, by bakemono

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I guess nforce2 chipset is slightly faster but the onboard video is not amazing. And I don't think nforce2 has any LAN driver for win98, if you are running 98. If you are running newer Windows though you might like to loot the slower systems for more DIMMs to build up 768MB or 1GB of RAM.

Did you determine which video card is the fastest? Maybe some of them are 128-bit bus and others are only 64-bit.

GBAJAM 2024 submission on itch: https://90soft90.itch.io/wreckage

Reply 4 of 10, by ShadowGun92

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I would suggest to bump the memory on each of the four ones then they're fine and you can use them for Linux for example

Reply 5 of 10, by treeman

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I clicked here only to look at pictures

Reply 6 of 10, by foil_fresh

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treeman wrote:

I clicked here only to look at pictures

its a wild world out there

Reply 7 of 10, by gdjacobs

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treeman wrote:

I clicked here only to look at pictures

Let your imagination run free!

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 8 of 10, by RetroPC_King

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I revive this topic 1 year later. What motherboard chipset is better? I have 4 picks: Nvidia NForce 2 Ultra 400, Nvidia NForce 2 IGP, VIA KT400 or VIA KT600? Anyone with experience can say. I will build this PC for:
-games
-work
-entertainment
What chipset is better?

Reply 9 of 10, by appiah4

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What games? If you want to play DOS games forget the nForce chipsets.

Reply 10 of 10, by Tetrium

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What OSs are you running on these 4 rigs?

I wouldn't put too much faith in the Premier PSU btw. Unless they miraculously improved their build quality, these PSUs are very lightly build and could damage your parts if they fail.
I don't know about the other brands from top of my head but Rexpower is also a very cheap one from what I remember. I remember seeing the Rexpower logo years ago and I had gotten a 300W Premier PSU NOS which caused stability issues with my Celeron 400 build till I replaced it with a second hand PSU of better build quality.

The graphics cards you have in your builds are relatively light for your configurations, but they should at least improve system stability due to these cards being overall quite mature and low in power consumption.

What you could do is combine your 4 rigs into 2, both featuring the Powerlink PSUs. I don't know Powerlink myself but a quick google search told me these were made by (or at least sold as) EVGA PSUs. They should at least be not as bad as the other 2 PSUs or at least that would be my guess.

Pics of your rigs could also help 😜

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
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