First post, by Mondodimotori
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So, as the title states, I'm opening this thread for suggestions and opinions on how to complete this build.
I finally got my hands on a 462 board that has a 4pin 12v connector for the CPU, a nice ABit AB-NF7-S2G picked up by hands from the seller. It's in great conditions and, apart from little dust over it, looks brand new.
The seller told me, when I went to pick it up, that it was short lived for him, being cast back in the box not even two years after being bought since, by the warranty sticker on it, he got it around 2007. And I bet it would've been painful to run a machine on 462 in 2007. Just lucky me, even if it wasn't as cheap as I hoped (50€), but being able to pick it up personally in it's original box was worth the price IMHO.
Now, I've had this board for almost a month, sitting in its box, waiting for some DDR ram wich I didn't had around, so I picked up some cheap DDR400 from samsung, no heatsik or anything fancy, but it's NOS, brand new.
After getting the ram I just grabbed my trusty Duron 1.1 Ghz (the first x86 CPU I ever owned), a Titan for cooling it, my TNT2 M64 and the case that originally housed the machine I plan to transform into my small factor Win7 rig, with OEM cooler master PSU, to see if the motherboard posted.
It did right away. I then chugged a SATA drive into it to install Windows XP (for now, since I didn't have small IDE drives around) and, after 7 hours of troubles with a couple of hard drives recovered from my office (two would either get stuck during early XP installation or at first boot, one was a 2TB one that wouldn't work right with this MOBO, giving me headaches even if XP got installed on it), I had a nice and stable XP SP3 installation.
I then proceded to change the TNT2 with an FX5600 with 45.23 detonator drivers and tested the machine thoughly. Now, it's clear that the biggest bottleneck is, right now, that poor Duron, wich was under 60% utilization in Half Life 1, and straight up begged for mercy when I threw NFS Underground at it.
But the board didn't miss a beat, same the RAM and the GPU.
Thus, now I need to decide how to complete this build, and here's what:
- The CPU: That Duron isn't fast enough for a machine like this one, and even if it was I wanna preserve the little rascal for sentimental reasons, since I had it and used it since 2002 at least. I was thinking to an Athlon XP, maybe something not that fast (under 2Ghz, if possible, for compatibility with some games I wanna play), maybe even from the mobile series. What are your experiences with them? I was eying either a 2500+ or a 2600+ from the Barton series, that's very cheap and uses a little under 70W of power, wich shouldn't be a problem for the cooler I have.
- The cooling fans: I'll probably keep the Titan (I alredy have one cooling a 1.4Ghz Athlon classic, and gets the job done), and there's no point in looking for a bigger/better cooler for the platform, since Volcano 11s go for around 70 to 100€ with shipping, and I'm not gonna spend that much money on a vintage cooler, so I'll probably just replace the original jet noise fan with a noctua one, and help it keep the machine cool with better case fans and ventilation
- The HDD: Currently I put in the machine a 2.5 inch 250GB sata HDD I recovered from an old laptop of one of my bosses, and it just works fine with this motherboard + Windows XP. Of course, I said I wanna use this machine for Windows 9x (probably Win Me, since I have slower machines that can be recicled for 98SE) so I must get a smaller HDD, that fits in the 9x HDD limitations, probably an IDE one to avoid any kind of incompatibilities. I probably have one 80Gb unit lying around, so I may use that one.
- The PSU: Something that was a huge headache with my originals 462 and 370 builds, in this case is probably the simplest thing to replace. Just getting a fully modular PSU from a reputable brand that comes with all the connectors I need. Il probably need just a couple of molex for the IDE HDD and case fans, run the DVD drive through the sata connector (wich I hope isn't a problem for Windows Me, since the MOBO does see it as just another IDE device), a 20 pin MOBO power and a 4 pin CPU power, and that's it. As little cables as possible. This OEM 500w PSU currently in the system does report 30 amps on both the 5v and 3.3v rail, so I could use it in one of those older builds that lacks a CPU 12v connector.
- A sound card: an Audigy 2 ZS, probably. Unless there are other good options for a WinME machine that will run just Windows9x games (no DOS, since I have a MOBO with a pentium III and ISA slot around)
- The case: Before starting the test build, I was looking around on ebay for one of those fancy looking gaming PC cases from the mid 2000s, with insane designs and all, but... I ended up using a cooler master case from mid 2010s for this test build and, apart from the terrible cable management caused by the non modular PSU and a wacky positioning on the MOBO of both the 20pin connector and the 4 pin connector, it could get the job done. The MOBO fits in it perfectly, the PSU doesn't cover the CPU fan and, right in front of it, there's a nice opening to fit two case fans that would help cooling the CPU and ensure nice air pressure through the cooler, even with a lower CFM noctua 80mm fan instead of the OG titan one.
What do you say? Is it worth getting another case, leaving this one as a permanent test bench, or should I just spare me those 10/20€ of a wacky case and keep this one permanently? - The RAM: For now, the ram appears to be running at 200mhz DDR (equivalent to 400mhz), wich is the max speed this kit offers. Of course, the CPU I would get won't have a 400MT/s FSB, but at best a 333MT/s one, so I'll probably have to downclock the ram a bit, and gain a bit of latency out of it. But, if push comes to shove, I can get a better kit (even if used), but I would like to avoid it, since this kit is brand new.