My plan for a new rig - comments/changes etc. please

[Mark R]

I'm planning on building this in the next 6 weeks or so - well I'm planning on building 3 of these (one for me, one for my bro and one for a friend). So they have to work perfectly, with no BS, and they have to be reasonably fast and reasonably priced.

CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2500+ (or 2200+ for 1 of them)

Mobo: MSI K7N2-L or Asus A7N8X (comments please)

RAM: 512 MB PC2700 (256 MB x 2)

Graphics: 128 MB Radeon 9500 or 128 MB GF4 Ti4200 (comments)

Drive: 120 GB 7200 rpm ATA (? Maxtor DM+9)

OS: Win2k Pro

Supportive components: as required

Basically, I don't want any funny surprises. Things like: Abit KT7-RAID not compatible with Creative GeForce2, Abit KT7-RAID integrated USB non-functional, Asus K7N-266VM integrated LAN not fully supported under Win2k. All of the above drove me mad, and have required either manual workarounds, or installing additional hardware.

 

[Sid59]

looks strong to me .. but for future upgrades to maybe 1 GIG of ram .. i'd go with a single stick of 512

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Maxtor 120GB 8mb deal @ OD ...each buy his own..

 

[Ketchup]

Only buy an MSI board if you don't want to and never plan to overclock. But MSI board do seem to be stable at stock speeds. This is from observation and personal experience.

I would go with the Maxtor, and maybe the Serial ATA model. They are kicking everything except WD's Raptor right now.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Mark R
Asus K7N-266VM integrated LAN not fully supported under Win2k. All of the above drove me mad, and have required either manual workarounds, or installing additional hardware.

What problems were you having with the A7N266-VM's LAN support under Win2k? I have twenty of them running Win2k at work.

 

[Mark R]

Non-functional IPX

I refused to believe it was the NIC, and tried everything I could think of. Then I added a cheap $2 PCI NIC, and had simultaneous fully-functional IPX on the PCI card and non-functional IPX on the integrated NIC.

 

[DARRIN]

I recommend the Asus A7N8X motherboards. Very nice features.

 

[thraxes]

Another vote for ASUS

 

[mechBgon]

What's the most recent driver revision and Windows2000 service pack you tried with the A7N266-VM, if you don't mind my asking? Do you have a particular reason for using IPX instead of TCP?

The A7N8X-Deluxe has both the nVidia and 3Com NICs onboard. I'm not sure anything's changed with the nVidia NIC, which may have been carried over from the MCP-T in nForce1, but hopefully the 3Com will work out for your IPX needs if the nVidia one doesn't.

 

[Mark R]

nForce drivers 2.0.3
Win2k SP3

This same problem also occurs with the Asus drivers on the CD and With unpatched Win2k, and SP1

I don't want to use IPX, but some of my favourite games use it exclusively (for LAN play).

 

[mechBgon]

Oh, I see That's a bummer, I've had no big problems with ours except the 2D is a bit fuzzy (GeForce2MX video core, go figure).

 

[moonshinemadness]

The Asus board is very nice and has many bells and whistles but might not work with the 2700 Ram. Id go with that, some 3200 ram (2x256 sticks to make use of DCDDR) The Nvidia TI4200, Maybe go serial ATA as its going to become the standard soon and we all like to jump on band wagons and id go for XP instead of 2k Personally because i like it more With the Asus you dont really need many other Hardware Components. But id get a Lite on DVD Drive and A Lite On Cd r/w, a cheap floppy and a fat 350w PSU.

 

[AtomicDude512]

Originally posted by: Sid59
looks strong to me .. but for future upgrades to maybe 1 GIG of ram .. i'd go with a single stick of 512

I would agree with that, otherwise fine!

 

[DARRIN]

I would disagree with the single stick recommendation since the Nforce chipset likes to have 2 sticks for better performance.

 

[Remedy]

since the Nforce chipset likes to have 2 sticks for better performance.

This can debated for until the cows come home. The fact of the matter is that the ASIC was developed with IGP factor as the Target. Whether or not you gain performance with 2 DIMM's in population is a moot point. But in SPP, the performance of 2 over 1 is dismal if any in the real world. The SPP based chipset is nothing more than a castrated version of the IGP chipset. The only reasoning behind the performance gain -is- 1, Driver development and 2, Prefetch advancements. Nothing to do with single verse dual in an Non IGP based system.

 

[DARRIN]

By God if I can get another 1% performance increase by having 2 sticks I'm gonna DO IT!

 

[Mark R]

Update: Think I'm going to get Radeon 9500(Pro)s and Asus A7n8Xs.

How fussy is the Asus about RAM? I could get 1 GB Generic PC3200 for the cost of 512 MB Branded PC2700.

Now, need advice about:

Heatsinks.
Need something quiet, ideally passive, but I suspect that's going to be optimistic with athlons. (My P2-233 (Klamath) o/c to 300 uses a passive heatsink. It runs so hot you can't touch it, but it's run well for the last 4 1/2 years).

I was thinking about something like the Coolermaster HHC-L61.

DVD
One that records would be nice. Teac DV-W50E or Pioneer 105.

 

[Markfw]

People that read a lot of my posts may be sick of reading this, but I love mine(HSF), and these are under-rated IMO:Vantec C7040, quiet and very cool. From $25-$33 depending on where you find them. I can get them locally for $25. My 2700+ at XP3500 speeds runs loaded at 41c, and you can't even hear it.

Edit: And I vote for the ASUS A7N8X (or deluxe), the Radeon 9500 (pro if you have the money) and the Maxtor with the 8 meg cache and fluid bearnings.