How does this budget NF7-S rig look?

Qty. Item Summary
1 Samsung 16x SD616 DVD-ROM (OEM)

1 SONY 3.5" 1.44MB Floppy Drive (OEM)

1 ABIT NF7-S V2.0 Motherboard

1 Samsung PC3200 400Mhz DDR 512M 64X64

1 AMD Athlon XP1700+ 1.47GHZ 384K 266 Tbred (TRAY)(JIUHB:0310XPMW)

1 VANTEC VA4-C7040 CPU Cooler for Socket A/370A

1 Leadtek WinFast A170TH (GeForce4 MX420) 64MB SDRM/TV - OEM

Subtotal: $384.99

Plus my existing WD 80gb SE

Ebay case and 450w ps

keyboard/optical mouse

Spare crt monitor (15" LOL)

It's not too bad for my first O/C rig

You really need an SLK-800 and a Tornado, maybe wait a while for the prices of the 9500 Pro's to drop, then you will have on hell of a rig.

It needs to be quiet and still do the job. That tornado sounds too loud. I may go with water when I upgrade the GPU.

The video card is a $35 closeout so I won't feel like I'm loosing anything when I replace it with a decent card. Thanx for that 9500 pro suggestion.

Wait!!? No way, I want it now

Yea if noise bugs you at all don't even think of a tornado. 7 volting the tornado is a must if you like to talk to people in the same room with out yelling. Nice setup for under $400. I just hope the 450ps is good because I had a 450w ps come with my case and I had to replace it with an antec true power 430w because it would hardlock all the time.

It's a cheap Power-win Chinese PS but they've been around for awhile. I have one in my old 486 and it's still working fine, so they must not be total junk. It's rated at 450 total and 225 for 3.3v/5v. I may never push it hard enough to lock up. I think it's that last hundred MHz you try to squeeze out that really sucks up all the juice. I'm not planning on raising the vcore much past stock as I want this box to last a few years.

Looks pretty decent for a budget box. The NF7-S has the onboard nforce2 audio, and actually uses the nvidia audio chipset, so there isn't a need to get a separate soundcard. I agree with the heatsink/fan comment. You'll want to get a SLK-800 (or 900) and a Panaflo 80mm fan. That's what I'm using now, and it's really quiet. You'll definitely want to get a better video card though, especially if you plan on doing any serious gaming with the system. At least get a Ti4200 or Ti4400, both of which are very overclockable. If you can afford it, that is. Just my $.02. Take it for what it's worth.

I found that VANTEC VA4-C7040 off our forum test list and picked the best quiet one I could find. If I need more quiet cooling, water would be the best route to go.

Thanx, I'll look up the results for your SLK-800 (or 900) too.

Edit: I found some.
SLK800, 5520 rpm, 55 dBA 43.5 C 26.2 C 17.3 C 0.23
SLK800, 3438 rpm, 44 dBA 46.4 C 25.8 C 20.6 C 0.28
SLK800, 2967 rpm, 43 dBA 47.6 C 25.8 C 21.8 C 0.29

About 5dB noiser (no biggie) but that sucker weighs over a pound.

I'm going to eventually get a great graphics card but I had to put my available funds into the mobo, mem & cpu first. There's several hundred more dollars needed to to get the rest up to snuff. Then if I go SATA RAID...

Why do most addictions cost so much?