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Need advice for my first DOS/Win9x retro build

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First post, by D3ckard

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Hi everyone,

I’m new to the forum! I’ve been interested in retro PCs for a while, and this is my first post and also my first attempt at building a nostalgia-focused retro system. I’m excited to share my plans and get some advice from experienced members.

I’m putting together a DOS/Win9x PC and trying to decide on the PSU for stability. Here’s the hardware I have so far (most items are brand new):

DFI AD77 (KT400 + DDR400) – brand new

Athlon Thunderbird 750 MHz – used (I could upgrade to 1 GHz, but I don’t want to go higher for nostalgia reasons)

ATI Radeon 9600 Pro – used

1× Corsair DDR 512 MB – brand new

Volcano 11+ cooler – brand new

Samsung IDE DVD drive – brand new

SSD (temporary; will replace with PicoIDE later)

Sound Blaster Live! – used

My goal is to maintain a stable minimum of 60 FPS at 640×480 or 800×600, especially in the following games, ideally running the CPU at 750 MHz:

Thief: The Dark Project

Thief II: The Metal Age

Deus Ex

Arx Fatalis

Now, about the PSU — I have two brand-new options, and I’m not sure which is better for a Socket A system that depends on +5 V:

Cooler Master Extreme Power Plus 460W

+5 V: 25 A

+3.3 V: 22 A

Combined 3.3 V + 5 V: 165 W

Antec Basiq 550W (BP550 Plus)

+5 V: 26 A

+3.3 V: 28 A

Combined 3.3 V + 5 V: 135 W

My analysis:

The Cooler Master has a higher combined 3.3 V + 5 V power (165 W), which is ideal for Socket A. It gives more margin for CPU, GPU, drives, and other peripherals.

The Antec Basiq has good individual rails, but the combined 135 W is lower. It would likely work at 750 MHz or 1 GHz, but with less headroom, so there’s a small risk of instability under load.

Conclusion / Question:

Given this, which PSU would you recommend for a Thunderbird 750 MHz → 1 GHz build focused on DOS/Win9x?

Would the Antec Basiq 550 W be sufficient, or is the Cooler Master Extreme Power Plus 460 W clearly safer?

Also, does the CPU run significantly hotter at 1 GHz compared to 750 MHz?

I’d love to hear your thoughts or any tips I might be missing. Thanks in advance!

Reply 1 of 2, by asdf53

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Both of these PSUs are more than enough. I ran a Thunderbird 1400 and a Radeon 9600 with a PSU that has 20A, 20A, 115W combined.

1 GHz runs 12W hotter than 750 MHz:
https://www.pc-erfahrung.de/prozessor/cpu-pro … n%20Thunderbird

But keep in mind that the slower Thunderbirds aren't great overclockers, so there's no guarantee that yours will reach 1 GHz at the same core voltage. 900-1000 MHz at 1.85V seem to be typical overclock results.

If you haven't bought the CPU yet and your board supports changing the clock multiplier and voltage, my advice would be to get one of the newer Athlons from 1200 MHz upwards, they have better silicon and a ton of voltage headroom. My Athlon 1400 (default vcore 1.75V) does 900 MHz at 1.12V and 1400 MHz at 1.52V. That would give you the flexibility to run newer games that take advantage of your Radeon 9600.

Edit: Given that the Antec PSU is modular and has higher efficiency, that would me my pick.

Reply 2 of 2, by dionb

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This would be a good Windows 98SE system, although it would probably appreciate a faster CPU. I don't get the 'nostalgia' hesitance with this motherboard - KT400 was a chipset usually used with late AthlonXP CPUs, so this is an odd pairing (although it will work well enough).

As for DOS, that's a different kettle of fish. Even with this slow Athlon, it's going to be too fast for a lot of titles and doesn't have too many options to slow it down. How bad that is depends a lot on which games you want to play. Similarly, DOS works best with ISA sound cards because DOS software can only address ISA resources and although the SBLive can emulate them, it comes with limitations regarding compatibility (it requires a TSR driver that in turn requires EMM386 which limits memory management options) and sound quality (its FM synth emulation is awful). Here again what you play determines how much of a problem (if any) that will be. Quake will be fine, but forget Ultima 7...

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