NEW COMPUTER!!! NEED HELP!!!!

[Guest]

whats up to everyone!!!!! Sorry I'm just a little excited.
I have been playing on a pentium pro 200 with 64mb EDO ram,
a 3.1 gb HD, and a 12mb voodoo 2 for the past 5 years!!!
Just tonight I ordered my new components:
motherboard: Asus A7m-266: 5pci, 1agp4x, DDR, ata/100, socket 462,
AMD 761 chipset
hard drive: seagate barracudaIII: 40Gb, ata/100, 7200rpm
processor: AMD K7-thunderbird-C: 1.2Ghz, 266Mhz fsb
soundcard: Creative SB live Value: OEM, pci
memory: micron pc2100: 256mb, single dim, DDR
Video Card: Gainward GeForce 3 power pack!!!

And best of all I'm getting broadband cable ISP installed THURSDAY!!! best week in gaming for me ever!

But any way, just curious as to any tips or pointers anyone has for me while, before, or after I set up my new system, any warnings to watch out for etc. any help is appreciated!

-Steve

 

[ChrisLudwig]

Two things that you didn’t mention that are very important to am AMD t-bird:
1. A good heat sink/fan and thermal compound.
2. Good power supply 300w+

I don’t know your skill level, or what else you would need to know. These 2 things I mentioned are things that got me in trouble the first time I build a t-bird.


- I got a board too: http://www.impactsites2000.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi

 

[thebluedog]

I wholeheartedly agree with the previous post about the power supply and heat sink. Don't just buy an $8 generic hsf. I did and it runs stable but it is a lot hotter than I like so I will probably go and buy another one real soon. Also, you didn't mention an OS and I just wanted to give you my opinion that Windows 2000 pro rocks! If you can get a copy (legitimate of course) I would recommend it. By the way. That is a pretty rad system you have got going. I have the same mobo, CPU, sound card, and ram but with the geforce 2 gts and a Western Digital HDD and I have had no problems at all so far. I love cable. You'll never go back! Have fun and good luck.

- alm "As long as it's funny it's okay."

 

[kusek]

I agree with the last post.

My suggestions:
1. Enermax 365P 350W ($59) or 465P 430W ($80)
2. Heatsinks- Orbs suck don't buy one. Look at http://www.athlonoc.com/hsfroundup1.php
http://www.3dhardware.net/reviews/ocz_gladiator/index2.x
I went with the gladiator. It appears to be #2 ($30) but less than half the price of the top Swiftec. If you want cheap Volcano II (~$10) is supposedly the best of the cheap.
3. Don't trust Asus Probe temp readings (using MBM 5 or the
bios to check) temps should be in the 40's C
4. Windows 2000 OS
5. I think your m/b is the micro ATX version of mine.
Nonetheless, it is still VIA and you may have bugs.
I had to flash the bios after about a week because it
wouldn't boot. If you have problems check with Asus site
(probably on your old machine like I had to do) about
latest bios revision. Also get the latest Promise ATA100
driver on a floppy for use during the Win 2k setup (if
you go with 2000)

 

[kusek]

I forgot to mention the most important thing.

Cable modems rule. I've had mine for 2 years and like the guy above said you will NEVER go back. 256 or 384 DSL is $10-25 more here (Omaha) and I've had download speeds near 3MB/s. Usually runs 500-1MB/s though. I would recommend a firewall program. Zonelabs has a freeware version.

 

[FUGGER]

I noticed vasaline was not on your shopping list. You might want to pick some up, cause your gonna need it.

 

[Guest]

Thanks ppl. I was too excited to list everything. I did pick upa 400 watt power supply along with an antec case.(actually came in it). I DID geta heat sink too, but thanks again, would have been a life saver if I had forgotten to get one of them for some reason.

 

[Guest]

BTW, I also have win 98 already, so I'm just gonna set that up ont he new machine, I am more familiar with it than with ME or 2k....Oh yeah, and vasaline, tubs and tubs of vasaline. Now I have to just wait......or break out the vasaline....the tubs and tubs of vasaline.....see ya'll!!!!

 

[JoeHead]

Always knew Gugar was a little funny. Havn't been here in ages and some things never change.

HSF - I use the Thermosonic Thermoengine. I have the delta but the noise grew old. Standard fan is good enough. I have a 1.2 and hit 1.3 stabily forever.

<b><A HREF="http://www.seti.tomshardware.com/" target="_new">How fast is your PC</A></b>

 

[Guest]

when it comes to cooling I'm not real worried. The antec case comes with 3 fans in it and pre-installed slots for 3 more. that's excluding the heatsink fan and the geforce 3 fan. It is also a very, very good vented fan, so over heating should be no problem. I don't really plan on overclocking either, at least not for a while.

 

[ZER0]

i had a cable modem and it went down at least once a day. upload was caped at 128k. slows down during peak hours.
now i have 768/768k dsl. its up all the time. i can pull as may ips of it as i want.

 

[kusek]

I bet you pay $60-100 for that too compared to my $30. They raised my upload from 128 to 256 about a year ago. I don't care as much about that. I like the faster download speeds much more. I downloaded a 30MB file from tweakfiles.com site yesterday at 350KB/s that's 2800 kbps.
I haven't had a problem with it going down but I guess it depends on the cable company. Cost vs. Performance a cable modem will win hands down. Kind of like AMD vs. Intel.