Need advice on this total athlon oc capable system

I've got money burning a whole in my pocket, and want to upgrade my dog P2 450 system.

I've decided to go with the Thunderbird. Probably the 1.33 Ghz chip.

The top threee MB contenders are Asus A7V, Abit KTA7-Raid, and the Iwill kk266-R. I'd like to oc this WITHOUT having to do any hardware modifications (if you saw what I did to my first Playstation, you'd understand).

What is the best board, and what type of cooling fans/sinks do I need? Also, I want a GE Force 2 Pro card.. which one?

Thanks all!

Jim

jrutter (Mar 25, 2001 09:16 p.m.):
I've got money burning a whole in my pocket, and want to upgrade my dog P2 450 system.

I've decided to go with the Thunderbird. Probably the 1.33 Ghz chip.

The top threee MB contenders are Asus A7V, Abit KTA7-Raid, and the Iwill kk266-R. I'd like to oc this WITHOUT having to do any hardware modifications (if you saw what I did to my first Playstation, you'd understand).

What is the best board, and what type of cooling fans/sinks do I need? Also, I want a GE Force 2 Pro card.. which one?

Thanks all!

Jim

Click to expand...

Pick the board out of your three that has the features you are looking for. I like the Abit SoftMenu III personally.

An Alpha heat sink should work well for you.

The Creative Annihilator Pro, Asus 7700 Pro or the Hercules Pro should be worthy of a look.

Terry

Ihave 2 abit boards 2 gig-a-byte and a epox board.My prefrence is the KT7A-Raid. Gig-a-byte isn't a very good o/cer. Epox isn't too bad. KT7-Raid is better than thoses. KT7A-Raid is the pick of the litter. In my opion it is the best I have had. As long as it performs the way it does I will keep buying them.


KT7A-Raid T-Bird 1000@1233 watercooled
KT7-Raid T-Bird 1000@ 1144 aircooled
GA-71XE Athalon 750@787 aircooled
GA-5AX K6-2-450 @551 aircooled
8KTA2 Duron 600@801 aircooled

1. I overclocked for the first time today w/ an Iwill KK-266r and it performed flawlessly. From 1st boot on I had zero conflicts, unlike some Abit and Asus owners who could fill the library of congress w/ their issues. My opinion.
2. Using the Vantec 62540D HSF and quite a few case fans, my ambient Temp. is 18 c idle / 21 C load and CPU temp is 21 C idle and 40 C load.
3. Anyone of the 3 Tachyon suggested got good reviews.

Welcome to the club...

My first AMD system below was built using the Iwill board. I previously used ABit and ASUS boads for Intel based systems, but the ABit boards on many occsions had issues with onboard controllers (BP6, BE-6II) and to some degree with stability (e.g could not use all RAM slots; IRQ conflicts on PCI slots), while with ASUS customer support just plain stinks.

I took the leap of faith, and got the Iwill board after reading several reviews, and I got to say that this board is the best I have had so far. In terms of stability it is just superb (man - 161 MHz is so sweet - and I am not the only one achieving numbers like that) , and the customer support is at least available and they sent me a new bios chip - after I srewed up the first one - with priority mail.

Somewhere I read that this board is a new design from the ground up, whereas ABit and ASUS just basically revamped their previous KT133 board with the new KT133A chipset. I have not seen too many people report FSB speeds over 145 or so on those boards - which may be an indication that the Iwill in fact is more stable - again I am guessing - but you asked for opinions.

Two things regarding modifications:

1 - Prior to installing the board one should remove the green chipset heatsink and apply heatsink compound, as well as add a small 40mm fan on top of it .

2 - the voltage regulator - at least on my board is off by 0.11 V. This means that you can achieve voltages up to 1.96 (in the manual max =1.85V setting) without board modifications. Unless you are really hard core that is a nice feature to have, and will definitely allow enough headroom to tweak out that processor.

Good luck

Yo

Oh something else - the memory scores on this board, in particular with the turk bios which you can download at www.trukoc.com are incredible.

At 133FSB it gets 550/600, which is almost 50% faster than Intel BX chipset (typically about 400/420), and at 161 I do get 675/750 - this means processing intensive applications are really flying.

My seti times went down from typically 6:10 (on 966MHz/138FSB Intel system) to 4:45 (!).

Yo

I get the same memory scores on my test KT7A board with Mushkin memory...running at 133MHz

well when i put a bigger power supply on my abit KT7A-RAID board i havent had a problem yet

the key is more than 300 watts with a 900 Tbird or higher

most people say im crazy but i have seen it with my own machine

i got 2 300 watter tied together

just 1 300watter and i lock up/ and have sparatic reboots

they key is properly powering your system

its better to have way too much power rather than being close to the line with power

over power and you know its a componinet really failing or not

not just that is not working because of power issues

also when i did this my g force2 card overclocked more and ran cooler

electronics that dont have to "pull" power to it because of low power, will run cooler !!!!!

also my CPU temp droped 3C underload

not the extrea fan either

had a bigger fan in the hole where the second power supply is

so if you uys are having problems the i would suggest either 1....tie 2 power supplys together or 2.......buy a 440+ watt entermax

go 550 entermax......never run out of power !!!!!!!!!!

hope this help with your decision

im saying go ABIT and get atleast a 440 watt entermax power supply and throw a new 1.33 mhz t bird on it and watch it fly

Tachyon (Mar 26, 2001 05:11 p.m.):
I get the same memory scores on my test KT7A board with Mushkin memory...running at 133MHz

Click to expand...

In your dreams...

AZZKICKER (Mar 26, 2001 08:16 p.m.):
well when i put a bigger power supply on my abit KT7A-RAID board i havent had a problem yet

the key is more than 300 watts with a 900 Tbird or higher

...

Click to expand...

Right on - another thing I have been observing is the drop in the +5V feed. At stock speed and voltage it may read 5.05 or so, but overclocked and buffed up to 1.90V it may drop to 4.83.

In electrical terms a 4% or so drop is not too bad, but any drop in voltage will be made up by amperage, and that may ultimately lead to more heat and also kill certain components.

I do own an excellent 425W p/s from Pcpowerand cooling. The thing cost an arm and a leg - well almost( $200). The thing is regulated to within 1% rather than the industry standard 5%. Moreover it has variable resistors that allow to raise the output voltage. So I am running at 5.10V under load now, whereas it was at 4.85 before. This definitely adds to stability.

Yo

Yomama calls it as he see's it, I put a 40mm vantec chipset fan on the greenie (talk about a ***** to lap!!) and according to MOBO monitor (for what thats worth) is running betwixt amb. and cpu temp.
Azzkicker, Do you have a twitchy finger or do you like space?