Upgrading Advice

[KevDaMan]

I currently have a p3 500 mhz cpu and I want to upgrade only the board and processor
Money is important and it has to be extreamly overclcokable so i need advice on a good board and cpu that will overclock well. with AMD u can unlock the processor right? is this hard I have experience with building computers and I am ok with taking out the processor and what not. I am thinking about watercooling also. Hehe I need advice good watercooler advice for fair price also all opinions with be greatly appreciated. if u recommend a site to buy stuff Canadain sites would be much better for me. thx :)

[Tacoman667]

Ok, first thing's first, Do you want to use your SDRAM you already have or try out the new DDR RAM? If you want to stay with SDRAM, then the ABIT KT7A is a very good board to use. If you want to use DDR RAM, then I only have experience with the EPOX 8K7A I picked up yesterday but I am VERY pleased with what I have seen on it thus far. Next for the CPU, I have a 1gig TBird /266fsb that does 1.47 or higher. The 1gigers all happily do 1.4gigs easily. Now if you want overclockability, then this is the chip for you. If you want HIGHER overclockability with less of a margin, then the 1.33 AXIA's are the way to go. I hear they will do 1.6gigs+. The 1giger has the highest overclackability with air cooling though. I hear that dabs.com is a good canadian site but I do not personally have experience with canadian purchasing since I live in the good 'ol USA. You might wanna call dangerden.com and see if they will ship to Canada, for they have the best water cooling systems around. I hope this helps ya in your search for excellence.

[Amedeo602]

I heartily recommend the Asus A7A266 board. It's fairly inexpensive (I've seen it as low as $143)

It offers the choice between DDR ram and regular SDRAM (so you can use the sdram until you get the cash for ddr ram). NOTE: do NOT use ddr and regular sdram together, it can fry your ddr ram! It's got overclockability (FSB or multiplier, via the 10 dip switches) as well as voltage settings. It's pretty easy to set up (this is the first comp i built and i did it in <2 days, from buying parts to having a working machine). It's got temperature/fan monitoring as well.

DDR up to 2 gb
SDRAM up to 3 gb
5 PCI
1x/2x/4x AGP (Pro)
up to 6 USB ports

As for unlocking processors, my 1.4 came unlocked. If you need to know how, look on the o/c homepage for the articles. It looks easy enough, but I've never done it....

[Tacoman667]

Amedeo602 (Jul 08, 2001 08:06 a.m.):
I heartily recommend the Asus A7A266 board. It's fairly inexpensive (I've seen it as low as $143)

It offers the choice between DDR ram and regular SDRAM (so you can use the sdram until you get the cash for ddr ram). NOTE: do NOT use ddr and regular sdram together, it can fry your ddr ram! It's got overclockability (FSB or multiplier, via the 10 dip switches) as well as voltage settings. It's pretty easy to set up (this is the first comp i built and i did it in <2 days, from buying parts to having a working machine). It's got temperature/fan monitoring as well.

DDR up to 2 gb
SDRAM up to 3 gb
5 PCI
1x/2x/4x AGP (Pro)
up to 6 USB ports

As for unlocking processors, my 1.4 came unlocked. If you need to know how, look on the o/c homepage for the articles. It looks easy enough, but I've never done it....

See, I don't have experience with that board so I didn't include it on my post. I did think of it though since it has DDR and SDRAM in case he doesn't want to make the switch just yet. The EPOX 8K7A is much cheaper though and is proven in many reviews of it's stability. DDR is very nice and a HUGE jump from where you are at now. By the way, the 1.4 TBirds run VERY hot, I hear, so make sure you have exceptional cooling.

[Amedeo602]

Tacoman667 (Jul 08, 2001 08:17 a.m.):
See, I don't have experience with that board so I didn't include it on my post. I did think of it though since it has DDR and SDRAM in case he doesn't want to make the switch just yet. The EPOX 8K7A is much cheaper though and is proven in many reviews of it's stability. DDR is very nice and a HUGE jump from where you are at now. By the way, the 1.4 TBirds run VERY hot, I hear, so make sure you have exceptional cooling.

The Epox is cheaper, but in the long run I think that the asus would be better because it supports ddr. I personally don't want to upgrade my mobo in 6 months (but i probably will anyway, lol), that's the main reason i picked it. it all comes down to what the buyer wants....to me the $$ difference in boards is worth having the ability to use ddr

[plague]

just to let you know, i think its the 1.2's and later (might only be the 266fsb), they come already unlocked, so you dont even have to worry about it. if you do get the 1 gig, youll have to connect the L1 bridges, which ive never done b/c mine is already unlocked, but isnt very difficult.