Recommend a Motherboard - Help

[Wangel]

I have a custom built system with a 233MMX pentium with 64 Megs of EDO RAM. The motherboard is maxed out (CPU) and will not take a faster chip. I would like to upgrade my motherboard and RAM. Here is what I already have.

Video - Diamond Stealth 2000
SCSI - Adaptec 2940
HD - 10 Gig IDE, 2 Gig SCSI
CDR - IDE
CD - Plextor SCSI
Sony - 10 Gig Tape Backup IDE
Sound - Turtle Malibu
Modem - US Robotics - Sportster 56.6
OS - Windows 98

What motherboard would you recommend along with what RAM. I would like to keep my budget to around $400 and still have about 128 megs of RAM. Can I do this? I might perhaps be able to go a bit more, but not much. I don't mind overclocking a bit, but don't want to get into anything exotic.

 

[RichardK]

If you can reuse your case, power supply, etc. you should be able to upgrade to something much faster for well under $400.

I just built new systems for myself and my wife, as follows:

EPOX EP-8KTA+ mainboard, Duron 700, HSF from Mwave -- $174 + shipping
256MB PC133 CAS3 SDRAM from PCcost -- $90 + shipping ($10 more for the second one)
Diamond Viper II AGP video card from Outpost.com -- $39.95 after rebate

I overclocked the Duron to 850 at 1.7v., and it's rock-solid. Probably could've gone higher, but we plan to use these for a good long time, and I didn't want to stress the CPUs.

PCcost doesn't seem to have the DIMMs right now, but you can find them here for $81.99!:

Cheap 256MB SDRAM

(PCCost sent me part number S256M16044-7 and Computer Super Sale lists S256M16034-7. However both are supported on the 8KTA series boards.)

Hope this helps. Good luck with your upgrade!