[Rallycry]

Well I bit the bullet and bought a Iwill KK266-R mobo from NewEgg for $130 shipped. Now I need to get a T-Bird (I think a 1.0 Ghz). Any good places to get my chip? (I would prefer a AXIA) and what CPU cooler would you recommend? Any tips or tricks to help improve the card. I read somewhere about putting a cooler on the Northbridge chipset. Thanks

[Aman99]

Well TCWO seems to be a good place to get 1 ghz 266 FSB chips, I have gotten 3 from them, and all of them were AXIA. You can get them for $122 +$7 for shipping if you call them and mention you saw that price on pricewatch.

As for CPU coolers, it all depends on how much you want to spend, so let me know and I'll give you a recommendation. The best cooler out there is the Swiftech MC-462, but that will cost you $80. Also let me know if noise is an issue, and I will help recommend a fan for you.

As for northbridge cooling, it might help you get like 5 mhz more FSB speed, but your motherboard should already be able to do at least 150 mhz FSB already, so if its worth it is up to you.

Aaron

[Rallycry]

Thanks for the info. If you ask TCWO will they make sure it is a AXIA, knowing my luck I would get the only non-AXIA chip in their stock.

I am thinking of spending about 40 dollars for the CPU cooler. I would prefer a quieter cooler that works well. I am not planning on OC for a while. But when I think I need the performance boost in the future I want to have everything ready and only have to change settings. Plus if I keep the cpu cool when not OCing it will probably be more stable and live longer. I checked out Tom's Coolers review, the Blizard Thunderbird and Noise Control Silverado seemed nice. I have not found anyone with the Silverado yet? I figure I will go to the cooling forum and see what everyones experience with them are. Thanks for any info you can supply.

[Aman99]

Well gettin an AXIA from them is not guaranteed, but if you don't you should at least get a AVIA from them, and they are just as good

I was really interested in the noise control silverado myself, but only place I could ever find it was on some german site, and i couldn't read what it said.

As for a good cooler for $40 with low noise, the option that will likely get you the best cooling, with only a fair amount of noise, is the Swiftech MC370 with a YS tech fan which you can purchase here for about $37 http://www.crazypc.com/Merchant2/mer...duct_Code=5071
That swiftech will give you plenty of cooling even if you overclock. If you want even less noise than that, then go with an Alpha PAL6035 with a Sanyo Denki fan, I hear they are super queit, although this setup will not cool quite as well as the swiftech, but if your not gonna do a super high overclock like 1400 mhz you should be fine with it. Those are about $34 here:http://www.plycon.com/anrange.htm. You can also go with the Alpha PEP66T there with a sanyo denki fan as well, about $38, its a better heatsink, but it will require you to modify it a bit to fit on your motherboard (all u gotta do is rotate the shroud on it 90 degrees), so that is up to you if you want to do that is well.

Aaron