Question about Thunder K7 and Bartons

Will the Tyan Thunder K7 (S4262) work with Bartons?

I understand that it has no overclocking options, but what if I set the multiplier on the bartons by manipulating the bridges?

Is it easy to the special power supplies that this puppy requires?

Any other idiosyncrasies on the Thunder K7 before I take the plunge?

Thanks.

I would avoid that board. It requires a special PSU which is expensive and it has NO tweaking options at all. You can't even run memory at CAS 2.0. Tyan boards are stable, but they are slow.

To find out whether it will support Bartons, just check Tyan's CPU compatibility sheet. If it supports T-breds, it will support Bartons. Palomino's only go up to 2100+, so if they support MP's up to 2400+ (for example), then you know that those supported CPU's are T-breds. If it supports T-breds, it should support Bartons.

Once again, however, I strongly encourage you to look at a different motherboard.

I understand that the overclocking options are minimal, but you can always overlock my modifying the bridges on your cpu for a higher multiplier, is that not correct?

The nice thing about K7 is that it has a lot of features such as on board SCSI, dual LAN, onboard video, etc. And you can get the mobo for about $150, which is cheap considering SCSI 160 cards are $150 by themselves.

As for the PSU issue, K7 compaticible ones are available for about $75 in many places I looked. I think newegg has a fortron one for this mobo for about $75 (460 watt).

Should I still stay away from this mobo?

For what it's worth, you can get an LSI U160 card from Newegg for about $45.

For $150, though, that is a good package. It just isn't my favorite, since you can't tweak it.