Building a TBird system. Need info please ...

[Dulanic]

Jober its not worth it.... sure a very large program will load faster but thats it. You risk data loss alot more than with a GOOD RAID card like Adaptec.... I think software RAID like Highpoint and Promise is pointless.

 

[RedRaider]

Hmm, .... Lots of food for thought here. Thanks people. I'm leaning towards the ABIT KT7 Raid and a GeForce 2 MX card at this point. I was thinking I'm not going to OC this TBird when I get it but after reading up on how easy it seems to " Pencil Trick " the CPU's I'll go for the O/C'ing. I've read a couple early reviews on the MSI Pro II board and still up in the air about this board. Read a pretty good review over here at : Overclockers Online but since I'm going to O/C, this one sounds a bit limited.

Anyway if ya have any other input just post away

 

[jinsonxu]

I've 2 KT7 raid MBs at the moment. Both have IBM 75GXP 30 gig harddrives, 1 with 256MB and nother with 384MB of ram. SBlive value, Geforce2 MX (both at 200/200) linksys nic, internal modem and 52X CD-rom drives. They're cool! Didn't encounter a single error when building it. Dunno why there were so many reports of incompatibilities or resource conflicts.

Using the ATA100 connector, Liveware installed, Via4in1s installed. The only bone i have to pick with it is that it only gets a 3DMark score of 5300s while other systems are getting 6000 plus.

Note that 256MB PC133 Kingston CAS3 ram using the Toshiba chips cannot do cas2. Sucks huh?

 

[jinsonxu]

The MSI board was fine. I fired it up without even needing the manual (crap shopkeeper forgot to put it back in the box, he forgot the ATA100 cables and the floppy cables too. Anyone know how much these cables cost? I lost the receipt. ).

The only thing is that weird powerup habit of the board. Less connectors for the IDE devices too. Also, does having a small form factor constitude as a problem?

 

[HellRaven]

<< Thanks people. I'm leaning towards the ABIT KT7 Raid >>



I would really suggest buying an Abit KT7 (non-raid). The highpoint controller on the raid version has been rather troublesome for some people. Plus, your not going to be using the raid so why spend extra money on it? The only other advantage of the raid version is the extra IDE channels which again, you won't be using.

Besides the Abit, the MSI K7T Pro2 is the best alternative. The Asus A7V has had alot of problems and although ASUS is working on fixes to the problems I think it is still better to avoid the it.

 

[RedRaider]

HellRaven,

Just leaning towards that board right now. You have some good point there though. With the Raid board I can use that later in futher upgrades down the road. I've had a few ( Intel based ) ABIT boards and havn't had any trouble with Highpoint controllers in the past. Although, this is a diffrent area I'm going into with the AMD Thunderbird CPU and boards. I'm still getting info and reading reviews at this point. Nothing set in stone so to speak. Up for futher sudgestions.

 

[RedRaider]

Over at mwave.com's site I put together a sample system based on what I wanted to do for this TBird system:

KENWOOD 72X UCR421WP ATAPI CDROM $85.00
ENLIGHT 7237/3 MIDDLE TOWER W/300W ATX POWER SUPPLY $62.00
MITSUMI 1.44MB FLOPPY DRIVE $14.50
AMD THUNDERBIRD 1GHZ (OEM)&amp; COOLING FAN BUNDLE w/Abit KT7 $414.00
CREATIVE LABS SOUNDBLASTER LIVE! VALUE PCI $47.90
ALTEC LANSING ACS45.2W POWERCUBE SPEAKERS $53.00
GUILLEMOT GeFORCE2 MX 32MB AGP W/SDR MEMORY (OEM) $119.00
IBM 20.0GB ULTRA-ATA/100 7200RPM 8.5MS 2MB BUFFER $122.00

Sub Total $917.40
S&amp;H (UPS Ground) $45.42


Grand Total $962.82

Not bad for the $$$ I'm thinking ... hmmm, ... maybe I won't wait a month after all

 

[joburnet]

If you shop around a bit then you can really find better deals on those products. EX) I got an IBM 75GXP 30GB for $125 after shipping from buy.com. Try going to techbargains(dot)com and looking at the deals there. The Hot Deals forum is good too.

 

[jinsonxu]

Yep, try the 30 gig. I was originally planning on a 20gig but the 30 one was a mere $20 USD more.

Also, there have been reports of high failure rates for the 75GXP 20gig IBM HDs. I'm hoping i don't encounter them.

 

[slpaulson]

If you buy today you can get a great deal on a quantum harddrive at buy.com. They have a 30gig 7200rpm for $136 with a $30 rebate and you can use the $10 off $30 or more coupon. Free shipping is nice too.

 

[billyjak]

I just built a system exactly like that one except with the MSI K7T Pro 2
Excellent board, great for oc/ing to bad I built it for a friend.

I have the KT7 Raid and I like it because of my 3 hard drives and room for some othe stuff like a LS120 drive in the future.
I didn't encounter the problems many others report.
If you decide on this board just make sure you get the latest bios UZ103b1 on Abits tiwan FTP sight along with the Hotpoint 103b_win drivers, also get the Via 4.25a 4-1 drivers for best performance.
I would suggest downloading them before you get it, so you have them available, this will save you time and headaches.

 

[odysseas]

i want to upgrade my system and i want to buy
AMD Thunderbird 900 with
Abit KT7-RAID or Asus A7V

i have
Diamond Viper 770 AGP
Maxtor 15Gb Ultra/DMA 33 7200 Hard disk (IDE)
Pioneer 36x CD-ROM
Teac R58S SCSI CD-R
Adaptec 2904CD SCSI Adapter
PC 133 Memory
Compex RL 2000PCI Network Adapter
HP 4100 C USB Scanner


i would like to tell me if i'm going to have any problem with my hardware and any of the above motherboard (specially with my Hard Disk and my SCSI CD-R
which motherboard is better (i think Abit)
and how far can i Thunderbird can go

thanks
Odysseas