Building a new box soon ! Need advise

[Dave2001]

Hey Guys !

Iam building a new box in the next month and now i was wonderin what components to put into it .
I have already a nice dark blue metallic case with a 300W power supply . As processor i would prefer an Athlon . Iam not so sure about the motherboard - especially because i have heard about this bug with the VIA chips. For the rest - iam planning to stil use my old RAM which i use in my old AMD K6-2 350 . The soundcard should be a 4 channel soundcard .
Iam actually wonderin the most about which motherboard to choose . So much choices ....
Any ideas ?

David

[bdg1983]

don't buy a giga-byte board
don't buy a thermaltake heat-sink :mad:

[bdg1983]

The Abit KT7A and KT7A-Raid are supposed to be quite good although they use the VIA chipset. I've actually got the KT7A with the Tbird 1.13 (266fsb) although I've yet to finish building it.

What type of memory will you be using from your old box? PC66, PC100 or PC133. The KT7A would run faster with the PC133. With the prices of sdram these days, it would probably be best if you purchase the newer memory.

[Dave2001]

Mmm the old memory is PC100 . Can this board handle that as well ? or only the PC133 . Obviously i would like to use the PC133 ... but i dont have the money all at once .. so i thought about building in first some old components ... and replace them then later ...

David

[demian]

I hear very good things about AMD's 760 chipset. You will, of course, need to buy DDR memory to take full advantage of that. I think Asus offers a board with that chipset and onboard adaptec SCSI controller (mmmhh yummy).

[Dave2001]

I dont think i can afford that ... and iam not really planning to use SCSI - dont have it now - dont really miss it .
What about a good ( and as well good supported graphics card ? ) ?

David

[Choozo]

The Abit KT7 (KT7/KT7A with/without RAID) boards handles both PC100 and PC133 memory sticks, as long as you don't mix them together. Can give some weird results.

I'm running a Abit KT7-RAID board here with a Duron 700. Got Mandrake 8.0 running smoothly on this setup.

Don't know what rockyrider has against the ThermalTake heatsinks (besides a bit noisy) since my Chrome Orb does a good job cooling the Duron.

[ASCI Blue]

I'd go with Epox over Abit, I've got a few friends who have had to RMA their Abit boards a few times to get a working one. Every bug with VIA chips has been taken care of one way or another. Get yourself a nice AMD T-bird 1 gig, it'll treat you well. Assuming you're not using PC-66 RAM A PC-133 mobo will use PC-100 just fine, but I agree that with the price of RAM you really can't turn it down. As for a HSF I've heard good things about Globalwin (FOP38/WBK38) and Swifttech.

[WilliamWallace]

heres my config (just built the box about 2 months ago)

ABIT-KT7 RAID mobo
AMD T-bird 800mhz
256MB pc133 ram
soundblaster pci-512 (works great)
and a voodoo 3 3000 agp

the only thing i wouldnt reccommend is the voodoo 3, because 3dfx went kaput.

[Cheeves]

If you're going cost vs speed, I would go with celeron. not because they are high quality chips, but because you can overclock the snot out of 'em. i got my 600 running at 927 right now. I heard I can go higher but im not willing to risk it. as for motherboards i like my via apollo pro 133a mainboard. i haven't had any problems (as far as i know). everything is configurable from the BIOS-even overclocking can be done without opening the case. but you don't have to take my advice--i just like what i have :)

[bdg1983]

okay i take back what i said earlier
IT's ALive!!!
muhahahah
oh good times
:eek:

[Dave2001]

Mmmm i prefer a AMD . My last chip was one and i was pretty happy with it i must say . And the nice thing - in my opinion - is that i can do in the Abit board nearly everything i mean lookin at the processors . In the beginnin it could be a duron and if i have some more money a fast Athlon .
So what about a nice VGA Card - I dont really have so much knowledge bout that . I think 32 MB would be good . But i want a good support under Linux , too !

David

[slacker_x]

Originally posted by Cheeves:
<STRONG>If you're going cost vs speed, I would go with celeron. not because they are high quality chips, but because you can overclock the snot out of 'em.</STRONG>

You can get a duron 900 for $120 same price as a Celeron II 800

take your pick...I also heard that the duron is faster than the celeron per clock cycle.

Another thing to take into consideration is that you could also get a 1 gig athlon for $165. That would be my choice. All prices in cdn $