$500 to spend, but what to buy?

[Guest]

Hi folks,

after plenty of thinking, an AMD tbird 1Gz seems to be a good idea. But which mobo?

I have plenty of PC100 memory, should I buy PC133? Athlon 'C' are not available yet so why should I get PC133?
Am I right assuming that 'B' types are run only 100 Mhz to the memory?

Also, I have a good 245 Watt ATX case. Should I buy another one? (I plan on plugging a net card, a sound card, a scsi card, 2 scsi HDs, 1 IDE drive and 1 CDRW)

thanks

 

[dannyaa]

Yes definetly get Pc133. An AMD C class processor has nothing to do with your ram speed being 100/133. What it does have to do with is the PROCESSOR bus speed being at 100/133. BTW, they do have some class c athlons out, I have one. Only 1.2GHz though. However, it is easy to get it to work... all a class c does is connect the L1 bridges by default. To fix this on a non class c processor, connect the L1 bridges with a pencil and change the multiplier settings (for example, from 12*100=1200 for a 100MHz bus 1.2GHz to 9*133 = 1197). Now you are running at 133MHz bus.
This only works on 1.1 & 1.2. I think it does on 1.0 also but I am not POSITIVE.
You should get a 300W or higher power supply.

With only 500 to spend you may not have enough money to get PC133 at this point, if you have a lot of PC100. But Pc133 is definetly a good thing. If your PC100 is not high quality (Crucial, Corsair, Muzkashi) then I would strongly recommend getting better quaility RAM, not generic, especially since you will be using an AMD.
A good mobo for 133MHz is the Asus A7V133 or ABIT KT7A-Raid; Tom has a review of these boards that you may want to check out. These run for about 20-25 dollars more than then the mobos from the same brand that do NOT support 133 FSB (133 FSB has a considerably speed boost, I would recommend it).
BTW, for $650 I was able to put together the following system:
ABIT KT7A-Raid, 1.2GHz Tbird running at 133 FSB (266 because of double pump)
256 MB PC133 DIMM from Crucial (they make great mem)
300W power supply/case
I used my current monitor, CD, HD, Sound, video, etc...

Hope this helps!

Danny