I prefer socket A heatsinks (they fit and are cheap) with a large heatsink and a large low RPM fan. Very quiet.

Make sure the holes on the video cooler will fit the holes on your video card's PCB.
There are a variety of popular hole patterns.

We just had the PSU discussion a few days ago but that was for a dual Tualatin setup. - Are you running a single or dual CPU board?

For the PSU what you have to watch is having enough +5v available and to know if you need -5v.
If you have no ISA based chips on the board and no ISA slots (or don't plan to use any ISA slots) then you don't need -5v.

I prefer used PSUs but to go that route you often need the capability of replacing capacitors and to know what type caps to use.
(That gets real long real fast so I'm not going there unless it's needed here. Tends to make threads a mess.)

With newer PSUs to get enough +5v often you have over-kill the crap out of +12v so you end up with a PSU with way more total watts than you will use.
It is worse with dual P3 CPU boards though. With a single CPU board there are usually reasonable options.
.

I always found Tualatin processors a pain for coolers, as they are slightly higher and put extra force on the clips.

For the graphics card, I go with the Zalman clones from eBay: How to replace fan on graphics card

As for the PSU, these old systems do draw most of the power from the 5V rail, but it's a Pentium III, not a high performance Athlon XP 3200+. In short, any half-decent modern PSU will do the job 😀 I think modern PSUs have a 20A rating for the 5V rail, that's plenty.

PCBONEZ wrote:

I prefer socket A heatsinks (they fit and are cheap) with a large heatsink and a large low RPM fan. Very quiet. […]
Show full quote

I prefer socket A heatsinks (they fit and are cheap) with a large heatsink and a large low RPM fan. Very quiet.

Make sure the holes on the video cooler will fit the holes on your video card's PCB.
There are a variety of popular hole patterns.

We just had the PSU discussion a few days ago but that was for a dual Tualatin setup. - Are you running a single or dual CPU board?

For the PSU what you have to watch is having enough +5v available and to know if you need -5v.
If you have no ISA based chips on the board and no ISA slots (or don't plan to use any ISA slots) then you don't need -5v.

I prefer used PSUs but to go that route you often need the capability of replacing capacitors and to know what type caps to use.
(That gets real long real fast so I'm not going there unless it's needed here. Tends to make threads a mess.)

With newer PSUs to get enough +5v often you have over-kill the crap out of +12v so you end up with a PSU with way more total watts than you will use.
It is worse with dual P3 CPU boards though. With a single CPU board there are usually reasonable options.
.

Single, and noted. I do not have any ISA slots- board is a TUV4X.

E: http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Zalman-ZM80A-HP-VGA-He … tsAAMXQDK1RvNoY Oh this looks pretty good. Passive is certainly quieter than active!

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

As for the PSU, these old systems do draw most of the power from the 5V rail, but it's a Pentium III, not a high performance Athlon XP 3200+. In short, any half-decent modern PSU will do the job 😀 I think modern PSUs have a 20A rating for the 5V rail, that's plenty.

On a socket 370 aside from add-in slots the only motherboard loads on +12v are some integrated sound chips, serial ports and fan headers.
Era typical add-in cards were heavy on +5v too. Up to 2 amps/slot.
If you think running everything on the motherboard + drives with 100 watts (20a x 5v) is a grand idea then you go right ahead.
I prefer to not load my rails that near 100%.
.

PCBONEZ wrote:

If you think running everything on the motherboard + drives with 100 watts (20a x 5v) is a grand idea then you go right ahead.

I already have 😀

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

PCBONEZ wrote:

If you think running everything on the motherboard + drives with 100 watts (20a x 5v) is a grand idea then you go right ahead.

I already have 😀

.... Loaded rails to 100%.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUWD-FflZPI

PCBONEZ wrote:

.... Loaded rails to 100%.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUWD-FflZPI

Plenty of headroom mate: https://youtu.be/1DG0E4srIuA

2 HDD = up to 2a on +5v
1 CDRW = up to 2a on +5v
3 add-in cards = up to 6a on +5v
1 Tualatin (assuming ~70% VRM efficiency) = 9a on +5v
Without even trying hard that's 19a on +5v.
.
Didn't even add up motherboard ICs, RAM, serial ports or USB loads.
.

Not what I'm seeing. The CPU maybe 25W, the HDD just 5W and the V5, which is an extreme case, maybe 30W as well.

I built tons of Pentium III systems, it's when you build fast Athlon XP systems that you need to worry about about using a modern PSU.

Just grab a PSU with 25A rating then, that will five you some extra headroom.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Not what I'm seeing. The CPU maybe 25W, the HDD just 5W and the V5, which is an extreme case, maybe 30W as well.

I built tons of Pentium III systems, it's when you build fast Athlon XP systems that you need to worry about about using a modern PSU.

Just grab a PSU with 25A rating then, should even some extra headroom.

25a should be just enough for a single CPU Tualatin.
Tualatin TDP is in the range of 30-33 watts depending on which specific one but TDP does not take into account losses through the VRM.

Most era correct run of the mill PSUs were only 65% efficient (no one cared yet) and VRMs probably were 65-70% efficient.
32 watts TDP through a 70% efficient VRM comes to 45.7 watts at the PSU.
.

The PSU in the OP has 32A on the 5V so uh, should be enough heh.

PCBONEZ you seem to know about this stuff.

How would one go about measuring the power draw on the rails?

Are these gadgets that you plug into the wall good enough?

I think power requirements sometimes over exaggerated. I had a PIII 1000 Coppermine rig that I recently took apart for another built. It was my first attempt for a retro build, even long before I started involving with vogons, so it was some kind of a freak without no real practical purpose. The PSU of that machine was a an old and tired Aopen FSP300-60ATV with following specs:

+3.3V 28A
+5V 30A
+12V 15A
-12V 0.8A
-5V 15A
+5Vsb 2A

And the specification of the machine was as follows:

Intel Pentium III 1000
Gigabyte GA-6VXE7+ + 1GB RAM (512MB x 2 Kingston PC133 SDRAM)
Matrox Millenium II 4MB PCI + 8MB Add-on VRAM
3Dfx Voodoo 3 3000 16MB AGP
3Dfx Voodoo 2 12MB PCI x 2 SLI
Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold ISA + SIMMCONN + 32MB 72 pin SIMM
Adaptec AHA-29160 PCI
Surecom EP-325 Realtek 8029AS PCI
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 30GB ATA
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 30GB ATA
Samsung SpinPoint V40+ 40GB ATA
Maxtor Atlas 10K V 73GB SCSI
Maxtor Atlas 10K V 73GB SCSI
Maxtor Atlas 15K II 73GB SCSI
Fujitsu MAP3367NP 36GB SCSI
Seagate ST33607LW 36GB SCSI
3.5" Mitsumi 1.44MB
5.25" Teac 1.2MB
LG GSA4040B DVD-RW IDE
HP Surestore DAT8 Tape Backup

In short; 8 HDDs (of 5 were SCSI), 2 FDDs, 1 optical drive, 2 RAM sticks (I also used with 3, when it was required with XP), 7 cards (two of them with additional RAM upgrades), 1 streamer, 2 very high rpm fans, 1 AMD socket 754/939 stock cooler, and the usual keyboard, mouse, joystick, usb card reader, etc.

I never had any power related issues at all, during its 5 year life. And especially for the first 3 years, I used it a lot. Same power supply is powering my new P4 Prescott build (4 HHDs, two display cards, 3 additional cards, two DVD drives, a floppy, 4 1GB DDR 400 sticks, etc.) at the moment.

SRQ wrote:

The PSU in the OP has 32A on the 5V so uh, should be enough heh.

The wattage is okay but I don't like APEVIA. They have a history of using crappy capacitors.
Thing is that model is too new for me to have seen it so for all I know they have gotten better.
If I can find a review that shows inside one I can give a better answer.
.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

PCBONEZ you seem to know about this stuff.

How would one go about measuring the power draw on the rails?

Are these gadgets that you plug into the wall good enough?

It's a PITA.
No those wall socket things won't work. They would only show you the total for all rails.
You would need to attach an ammeter to each individual rail to know what a specific rail uses.
Because each rail uses many wires you would either need to use many ammeters and add them up or come up with a test rig that combines all the wires into one for the measurement point and then splits them out again for the system.
Accurate ammeters that are precise enough to read to +/- 0.1 amps or even +/- 0.5 amps aren't so cheap either.
.

If you can source a better one that's equally quiet on newegg or somewhere by all means.

tayyare wrote:

The PSU of that machine was a an old and tired Aopen FSP300-60ATV with following specs: […]
Show full quote

The PSU of that machine was a an old and tired Aopen FSP300-60ATV with following specs:

+3.3V 28A
+5V 30A
+12V 15A
-12V 0.8A
-5V 15A
+5Vsb 2A

Your PSU is made by FSP and yours in particular is one of my personal all-time favorites! I had an almost identical one (wasn't AOpen, but had the same part number I think, but even the exact stated 5v, 3.3v and 12v is identical to some of the FSP units I have here).
Mine powered a Barton 3200+ without any problems. I do have a couple AOpen (really FSP) PSUs and none have ever giving me any problems.

The only real problem these older FPS units have, are their current age and some units had not so great caps.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

I always found Tualatin processors a pain for coolers, as they are slightly higher and put extra force on the clips.

Very much true. I think I even wrote an article about this specific problem in the Vogons wiki and know of a few ways to mount a HSF without putting as much stress to those tabs as would have if I installed the HSF as-is. I mix and match heatsinks, metal clips (sometimes I bend them a bit) and fans and end up with great reliability.

I'll edit this reply with a pic of an inside pic of my own Tualatin retro rig in a moment.

edit: I posted about my Tualatin rig here New rigs! (first ones of a bunch) , but I didn't give a very specific explanation of what I exactly did to make the HSF fit without it causing more stress.

I do remember that the newest s370 Intel stock HSFs were often specifically made for its own s370 chips and are factory made to have the correct "height". I think the heatsink is made to have the metal clip of the HSF sit a little lower to it reliefs the extra tention the clip would otherwise cause. However, these often came with green plastic thingies that clip to the socket tabs and the one time I installed such a HSF on a Tully, the clip broke with hardly any force applied whatsoever. I think this may be because of the age of the plastic Intel used for these green clip thingies on it's stock HSFs.

But the point is, Intel stock coolers were made with the extra height of the s370 IHS in mind.

SRQ wrote:

If you can source a better one that's equally quiet on newegg or somewhere by all means.

As I said I use used PSUs so I am out of touch with what is available new these days.
I will look and get back to you but the wife just got home so it will probably be tomorrow before I can do anything that involved.
.
Used ones that I know wouldn't need caps and I have used a lot of would be Earthwatts EA-500 or EA-500D and any of the original (not V2) Corsair TX series.
The are certainly others. I just don't have personal experience with them.
.

PCBONEZ wrote:

It's a PITA. No those wall socket things won't work. They would only show you the total for all rails. You would need to attach […]
Show full quote

It's a PITA.
No those wall socket things won't work. They would only show you the total for all rails.
You would need to attach an ammeter to each individual rail to know what a specific rail uses.
Because each rail uses many wires you would either need to use many ammeters and add them up or come up with a test rig that combines all the wires into one for the measurement point and then splits them out again for the system.
Accurate ammeters that are precise enough to read to +/- 0.1 amps or even +/- 0.5 amps aren't so cheap either.
.

What are your thoughts on something like this?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/DIGIFLEX-Power-Supply … k/dp/B004IO5CT8

This one only measures voltage, but maybe there is one that does current?