Archer57 wrote on 2025-10-23, 00:26:

One caveat here - weirdly enough the fact that connector exists does not mean that CPU VRM uses 12V. There are examples of boards with the connector and 5V VRM. So to be certain take a look at VRM input caps - they should be 16V or something like that.

As for different opinions - well, if CPU is powered by 12V then there is nothing else in whole PC which can use 125W (5V 25A) at all. Claiming that it is needed is simply illogical.

Systems with 12V CPU VRM have very similar consumption to modern systems and do not require anything special from power supply. Even worse - if you use old PSU intended mainly for 5V it will have the same issues as it would on any modern system and will not work well.

I was finally able to take a picture on the other side of the capacitors and, LUCKY ME, they appear to be 16V (at least, the top one is, the others are well hidden behing the I/O, and I can't be hassle in pulling the MOBO out of the case, but they also appear to have the number "16" on that side)

AlexZ wrote on 2025-10-23, 16:50:

A high-end copper Socket A cooler was needed back in the day in case of OC above 2.2Ghz. It was possible to run Athlon XP at 2.4Ghz. High-end coolers are also not quiet by today's standards as they use ball bearings and have very high airflow compared to Noctua fans. Back in the day cases had poor airflow so a good cooler was needed. It may not be necessary with a modern mesh case. An alternative excellent cooler is Thermaltake Volcano 7. TTC-CU5 TB is not bad either. There are very few of them surviving and owners do not want to part with them.

Well, then lucky me (again) that I got two of them, both with the fan speed tuner accessory! And got them for 10€ the first, and 20€ the second!
Volcanos and zalmans are, unfortunately, both rare and EXPENSIVE. Like, it would be cheaper to MacGyver your way around the mouning holes some 462 mobo have and adapt a modern tower cooler. I would love to see my Noctua NH-D15 G2 on a 462 mobo, but I guess it's beyond the 300g limit for the socket. But I believe there are plenty of good modern tower coolers that are under 300g, even the original AMD Zen cooler "wraith stealth" could be MacGyver'd on a 462 mobo. Considering it was provided even for 80+ watts CPUs, I guess it shouldn't cause heat problems on an old Athlon.

Of course, being those old fans noisi as hell, I replaced it on my first Titan with an 80mm noctua one, loosing 5° of cooling on my Athlon 1.4 due to lower CFM. I was able to recover those 5° by installing better airflow to the case. It's an OEM Pentium II style case, so I consider it a miracle to be able to keep that CPU below 50° under load.

This one case is a cooler master from 2013/14, it has a pretty big front fan (even if a bit obstructed), but it gives some airflow. But, most importantly, as seen from the pictures, right over the CPU cooler I have space for two fans! So, I bet, even installing a noctua fan on this unit too (or keeping it at the lowest RPM possible, which I bet has less airflow than a maxed out noctua 80mm fan), by stacking another bigger fan right on top of it, and a second one below it, I should get plenty of fresh air inside the case. I can even install an exhaust fan so that the PSU doesn't have to do all the work.
So, TBH, cooling isn't the bigger issue here. It was the VRM. And, as the above picture shows, while they still are electrolytic, they are 16V capacitors, wich should mean the MOBO will use that sweet, sweet 12V rail for the CPU. But I'll still get myself a 25A PSU, since I found one that costs 80€ and can be used in other builds I plan for the future.

I am a bit surprised that this board should not be able to handle SSDs. I have been using them on all but my 486, as it can only handle 504MB of disk space and any 512MB CF card will be fast enough really.

I have used in the past an Athlon XP-M, and it did what it should, OC like hell. IIRC, I could even switch the multiplier somehow to make it slower too. I also used a Geode at some point.

Despite having used AthlonXP for some years, I have reverted back to intel and have cleansed the house of all the AMD stuff. In fact, much of it simply expired. And I wasn't willing to replace tons of capacitors with only a raincheck for success.

About old PSUs. They can die. So can new PSUs. Not so sure if they pose such a risk, if the caps look good and you do not OC too much. You can always measure their power intake under load. If that is well below their specs, I would just let them run. The risk of a boad having cap failure seems larger than for the PSU. I have had several boards with bad caps but only ONE catastrophic PSU failure. And that was a cheapo PSU which had to deliver what the label promised.

Just one word of caution about Enermax: At one time they did have a problem with their "initial current limiter". It kind of tends to erode and eventually explode, gained them the nick of "Enermax flash bang". I experienced this once but to give credit to Enermax, both the PC and the remaining PSU survived the explosion. It still serves in the media PC in the fitness room. Probably 20 years old now. In the machine I write this on is another Enermax which I bought second hand in 2012 or so. It is on every day.

ux-3 wrote on 2025-10-23, 18:36:

I am a bit surprised that this board should not be able to handle SSDs. I have been using them on all but my 486, as it can only […]
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I am a bit surprised that this board should not be able to handle SSDs. I have been using them on all but my 486, as it can only handle 504MB of disk space and any 512MB CF card will be fast enough really.

I have used in the past an Athlon XP-M, and it did what it should, OC like hell. IIRC, I could even switch the multiplier somehow to make it slower too.

Despite having used AthlonXP for some years, I have reverted back to intel and have cleansed the house of all the AMD stuff. In fact, much of it simply expired. And I wasn't willing to replace tons of capacitors with only a raincheck for success.

About old PSUs. They can die. So can new PSUs. Not so sure if they pose such a risk, if the caps look good and you do not OC too much. You can always measure their power intake under load. If that is well below their specs, I would just let them run.

Just one word of caution about Enermax: At one time they did have a problem with their "initial current limiter". It kind of tends to erode and eventually explode, gained them the nick of "Enermax flash bang". I experienced this once but to give credit to Enermax, both the PC and the remaining PSU survived the explosion. It still serves in the media PC in the fitness room. Probaly 20 years old now. In the machine I write this on is another Enermax which I bought second hand in 2012 or so. It is on every day.

Now, it probably would. A 250Gb 2.5' SATA HDD works flawlessly with XP SP3. The problem would be the OS I intend to use, ME, which isn't really designed for SSDs, so gains would be minimal and wear on it would be bigger. I also alredy have a cheaper 462 mobo, and that thing boots win ME in less than 30 second. Less than 60 and I'm bullet timing in Max Payne. So I really don't feel the need of an SSD.
About Athlon XP-M I am now less conviced, having scavenged many 2004 forums of people complaining that, since this MOBO doesn't support multiplier OC, and not supporting officially XP-M CPUs, they would default to x6 multy, thus becoming much slower than factory advertised. I don't know if future BIOS revisions fixed this issue (I am on the latest one), but I don't feel like gambling it, especially since I'm also pretty sure that an XP-M CPU would not work in my other, older, cheaper 462 mobo.

Oh yeah, I very well know the risks with used PSUs, that's why I hunted down a MOBO with a P4 connector for my new 462 Win 9x build. So that I could use quality modern units and minimize risks.
Now, I still use both those old Enermax, one in that cheapass 462 build with Athlon 1.4, the other in a 370 build with a PIII 1000. The both are from the EG series, highly suggested on this very forum, which was highly praised at the times too (around 2005/06) and I don't think is from the "flash bang" series. One is a 495W unit, the other a 600W unit. They both work. The 495 unit used to whine when in stand by, I tried taking it to a repair place, but without schematics they didn't want to risk bricking the unit, so I just kept using sparingly until, after a few weeks/months of usage, it stopped whining.

Now, when I check Everest, the 600W unit with the Athlon 1.4 will get hammered on the 5v rail hard under load, bringing it down to 4.80V reported. Still within ATX specs, but close to be out of them (minimum should be 4.77, no lower). Similar things happen with the 450W unit with the Piii 1000, going down to 4.88v under load. But, even there, I never experienced any shut downs of failed boots on both those systems, evne with their 2 years old stock PSUs when I first pulled them out of my parents' storage. Only precautions I take are: good ventilation and less power hungry GPUs. I have a PCI 9250 in the Athlon, and an MX440SE in the Piii, so to not stress the PSU too much (that Athlon alone is a pretty huge stress alredy). No OC'ing either. That's something I did only on the 775 build, which uses a brand new PSU, albeit from a cheap unknown brand. That unit will haveto go, at some point, and be replaced with a premium modular unit, especially since my main GPU there is an HD6970, quite the power hungry card.

A lot of the issues you ran into are resolved by moving up to Socket 754. The 5V rail becomes less important. 3200+ chips are inexpensive as they aren't the top end. And I'm running a stock Ryzen 3000 bundled cooler on mine so you have access to a large number of modern cooler that are both quiet, and do a great job of cooling. With the later Cool n' Quiet CPUs you have the ability to lower the CPU multiplier through the BIOS.

The only issue is needing to be careful about what chipset the motherboard has if you want to run DOS games.

Socket 462 like Pentium 3s make great Win9X systems. But if you are shooting for the top end, Socket 754 and Pentium 4s can give you even better performance at a lower price.

SScorpio wrote on 2025-10-23, 19:26:

A lot of the issues you ran into are resolved by moving up to Socket 754. The 5V rail becomes less important. 3200+ chips are inexpensive as they aren't the top end. And I'm running a stock Ryzen 3000 bundled cooler on mine so you have access to a large number of modern cooler that are both quiet, and do a great job of cooling. With the later Cool n' Quiet CPUs you have the ability to lower the CPU multiplier through the BIOS.

The only issue is needing to be careful about what chipset the motherboard has if you want to run DOS games.

Socket 462 like Pentium 3s make great Win9X systems. But if you are shooting for the top end, Socket 754 and Pentium 4s can give you even better performance at a lower price.

That I know, let's just say a 462 was my first ever PC 25 years ago, so I feel attached to it.
Also, having a 775 board with an E8600 and three GPUs for it (HD4850, HD6970 and GT640), I think I'm all covered for most games released between 2001 and 2007 on XP, with Windows 7 being the next logical step (and alredy in the planning phases of that build).
Thus, when I found this not too expensive 462 mobo with P4 connector locally, I jumped at the occasion to finally build a definitive 9x build out of it (but no DOS, for that I have a QDI mobo with an ISA slot, should do the trick if needed).

And, having the p4 connector with a decent enough VRM, I think that PSUs woun't be an issue, just cooling may present a small challenge, but with a Titan cooler, and a more modern case with good ventilation, even that shouldn't be a big issue.

So no, I'm not shooting for the top end, since I'm pretty sure that even my PIII + MX440SE combo is alredy more than enough for any game that came out up until 2001. This new, definitive, 9x build, with an FX5600 and a 2500+ or 2600+ CPU, was made just because I can finally use almost any good modern PSU with it, not having to hunt down old units with strong 5V and 3.3V rails in decent conditions (with all the risks attached to it). And I'm confident I'll be able to play any pre XP game on it at max settings, 60+ fps, maxing out my CRT resolution. Hell, I bet even some very early XP games, as long as they are DX8, should run fine on this setup.

Also, being it from around 2007, this board may be outside the capacitor plague, and since it was used for less than two years, it really looks basically brand new. That's just a plus in my book, TBH.

I solved Windows XP/Vista/7 with one build - AM2+ with Phenom II X4 955 (3.2Ghz). In Windows XP/Vista about as fast as E8600, but with 4 cores can also handle Windows 7 era.

Athlon 64 3400+ is more of a curiosity.

Your s462 board is definitely not from 2007, at that time they were no longer made. It is AM2(+) era.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-10-23, 20:24:

I solved Windows XP/Vista/7 with one build - AM2+ with Phenom II X4 955 (3.2Ghz). In Windows XP/Vista about as fast as E8600, but with 4 cores can also handle Windows 7 era.

Athlon 64 3400+ is more of a curiosity.

Your s462 board is definitely not from 2007, at that time they were no longer made. It is AM2(+) era.

Well, I don't know if it was actually manufactured in 2007 (I doubt it), but it was for sure sold in 2007. There's a warranty sticker on it from July 2007 (unles that sticker is for when the warranty ended, wich would put this board at a more realistic 2005 sold, but that'0s not how warranty stickers usually works), and even the seller told me in person the story of this board, being bought when 7754 and 939 were alredy all the rage, and used for less than a couple of years since it was a pretty slow system by then, he switched to a multi core machine.

About a single "good for all" build, I dunnow, I feel they have the potential of being more headaches than anything else with compatibility and stuff, especially trying to fit 9x too in it.
But even trying to mix XP and 7 you could encounter issues. Like, for a 7 build I wouldn't go lower than a 10 series nVidia card (like a 1070 or 1060), to get high resolution performances and fast physx support, without needig a power hungry 900 or 700 series card. A build like that could encounter issues in some very early XP games that didn't run on DX9.
That's why I'm focusing more on single systems that targets a specific era of gaming while maximizing performaces.

Get this build put together and let us know how you like it. Socket 462 was a magical era in PC building.

Abit NF7-S2G is a solid board, just not made for o/c! Any sempron, like that 3000 I talked about, or a Barton 2500-2800 are more than enough to run 98SE and any game up 2002. I seriously think that 20+old parts should not be o/c.
My dream PC that I play all my games on is also socket A: athlon xp 3200 and gf 7600gt on abit an7. Can a socket 754/939 system play all my games better than this one? Sure it can but it would not be fun and it would not have that nostalgia touch that makes me feel so good.
Go ahead and build it!
PS: abit socket 462 boards are higly collectible!

smtkr wrote on 2025-10-24, 01:01:

Get this build put together and let us know how you like it. Socket 462 was a magical era in PC building.

Yup, you even have sparkles and lightnings from those period correct PSUs 😁

nd22 wrote on 2025-10-24, 14:35:

Abit NF7-S2G is a solid board, just not made for o/c! Any sempron, like that 3000 I talked about, or a Barton 2500-2800 are mor […]
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Abit NF7-S2G is a solid board, just not made for o/c! Any sempron, like that 3000 I talked about, or a Barton 2500-2800 are more than enough to run 98SE and any game up 2002. I seriously think that 20+old parts should not be o/c.
My dream PC that I play all my games on is also socket A: athlon xp 3200 and gf 7600gt on abit an7. Can a socket 754/939 system play all my games better than this one? Sure it can but it would not be fun and it would not have that nostalgia touch that makes me feel so good.
Go ahead and build it!
PS: abit socket 462 boards are higly collectible!

Yup, That's what I ended up reading while digging old forums. Overclockers were understandably mad at Abit for releasing a new board with that name that, on price, it was basically the same of the OG NF7. But normal people that just wanted something that worked? With SATA and Gigabit ethernet? Once bugs in the BIOS were solved by rev.13 onwards, it actually became a pretty solid 462 board.
Now I understand why this board, on ebay, usually goes for 100+€ without shipping. I feel like 50€ hand picked, with the box, was a steal, at this point.
Also, I found a not too expensive 25A PSU, and I alredy got a 22A PSU, both from reputable brands and with good ratings, so I can test stability with those. But with 16v caps on the VRM it shouldn't be a huge problem (I hope).

About OC'ing, yeah, I didn't feel like doing it on this build. But I couldn't resist on my 775 build. I had to push that E8600 to 4 Ghz.

I also found a good seller for chep 2500+ and 2600+, all bartons. So I'll probably pick up one of those.

FInally got my hands on the 2600+.
Works great with RAM running 1:1 ratio at 333mhz FSB, and it also runs pretty cool with that cooler, remaining a little over 40° under load.
The FX5600 now pulls over 9800 points in 3dMark 2001.

Now I just need that decent new PSU and the right size HDD for 9x, and I should be all set.

When the build is ready, I'll add pictures to the main post!

I also added a Palomino 1600+ to that CPU order for my other 462 system, the one with the 1400C. Now I can finally use that PC without having to worry about heat, I went from 49° under load to around 40° there too. And since that system doesn't have a P4 connector, maybe now I can get away with a PSU with just 25A on the 5V rail.
Now, that to do with that Athlon 1400C... 🤔 It's sure is fast, but it's also power hungry and runs pretty hot. For now it joined the CPU shelf.