I just recomend a good brand PSU. The moderns ones like Corsair 400w will cover well.

I'll post my recommendation from this thread. Works for PIII systems too.

I heard using modern PSU to retro pc is pain in the arse, what do I need to convert my psu cables beside the 4 pin molex? also will my soundblaster live value works with it without all of these -5v stuff?

PSU is probably fine unless you have several harddisks in there or something. The real question is what you are running on a P3 for which a Radeon 9600 isn't good enough.

But if you can find a GeForce 7600 AGP that would be much faster in theory (totally limited by the CPU most likely) and doesn't even need any more amperage.

pote2639 wrote:

I heard using modern PSU to retro pc is pain in the arse,

Not really -- unless your motherboard uses AT and not ATX.

pote2639 wrote:

what do I need to convert my psu cables beside the 4 pin molex?

You might run into the 24-pin power supply with 20-pin motherboard problem, which isn't usually much of a problem as described here:
https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch001384.htm

pote2639 wrote:

also will my soundblaster live value works with it without all of these -5v stuff?

I think lack of -5v is only a concern with certain ISA cards.
I haven't heard of it affecting PCI cards.

bakemono wrote:

PSU is probably fine unless you have several harddisks in there or something. The real question is what you are running on a P3 for which a Radeon 9600 isn't good enough.

But if you can find a GeForce 7600 AGP that would be much faster in theory (totally limited by the CPU most likely) and doesn't even need any more amperage.

Alright thanks! maybe I'll look into that, I only have 1 hdd 1 dvd drive and 1 floppy emulator so I guess I'm fine :d I'm usually playing mid 90s DOS games to mid 2000s games. that's why I'm trying to dual boot Windows 2000 and 98SE. XP is so slow on P3 though so I skipped it.

skitters wrote:

Not really -- unless your motherboard uses AT and not ATX. […]
Show full quote

pote2639 wrote:

I heard using modern PSU to retro pc is pain in the arse,

Not really -- unless your motherboard uses AT and not ATX.

pote2639 wrote:

what do I need to convert my psu cables beside the 4 pin molex?

You might run into the 24-pin power supply with 20-pin motherboard problem, which isn't usually much of a problem as described here:
https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch001384.htm

pote2639 wrote:

also will my soundblaster live value works with it without all of these -5v stuff?

I think lack of -5v is only a concern with certain ISA cards.
I haven't heard of it affecting PCI cards.

I'll also looking into psu too but my psu looks fine-ish enough to play something like Splinter Cell Chao Theory and SimCity 4 for several hours, but still it is aging.

You probably need to upgrade cpu before gpu, 9600 pro should already be at the point of cpu bottleneck with that P3. Also a good quality 300w psu should be able to run any AGP card just fine, not like they made any 200+ watt monsters like GTX 480 for the AGP slot...

If you will be dualbooting win9x and win2k, and want more performance for the latter, go with athlon XP or athlon 64, maybe pentium 4, if you don't care about period correctness even core 2 duo with one core disabled can work great for this task

God Of Gaming wrote:

You probably need to upgrade cpu before gpu, 9600 pro should already be at the point of cpu bottleneck with that P3. Also a good quality 300w psu should be able to run any AGP card just fine, not like they made any 200+ watt monsters like GTX 480 for the AGP slot...

If you will be dualbooting win9x and win2k, and want more performance for the latter, go with athlon XP or athlon 64, maybe pentium 4, if you don't care about period correctness even core 2 duo with one core disabled can work great for this task

Hmm, do you think it's still able to run anything before 2006? I don't play something huge like farcry 1 or crysis 1 on my retro PC since both of them are running fine on my modern PC already. however I know SimCity 4 does need a lot more power to run big cities but I don't know if it worth it. Chaos Theory is running fine on my system though