Hi all, this is my first post for a long time here and I've sort of fallen behind the cutting edge by a long way! I'm moving away next year and would like a computer to take with me and have a 1/3rd of a computer in my room that I want to use. Currently I have: Abit KT7 (yes, that old school!) Duron 1GHz w/Alpha 3095 Geforce 2 MX SB AWE64 (ISA!!) SCSI II card Realtek NIC Sony monitor Basically, I want this computer to be as quiet as possible for working and to listening to music so that means ditching the Alpha for something like a Zalman flower. Any suggestions there? NO WATERCOOLING PLEASE! I would like to upgrade the processor as well, I remember that a T-bird Athlon is the fastest a KT7 board will take. Where can I get one? I'm not really in to serious gaming, so I may stick with the GF2, although I'd be open to suggestions for a sub £100 card, maybe an ATi of some kind. I've developed a USB DAC for audio purposes, and to my mind the AWE64 is still a good card, certainly sounds a lot better than any of the Audigy range for listening to music. Thanks to everyone in advance, could be a few days before I'm back here but I will pay heed! If anyone's interested in the USB DAC I developed: here's the link It's a hard DIY build due to the small components, but it sounds fantastic through a good sound system. I've not got any boards left just now, but I'm doing another run in the near future cheers g
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-156&depa=1 i would stick with the gf2 its a good card, but look around on newegg and ajump see what you like maybe even ebay
Im guessing your GeForce2 has one of those really annoying 40mm fans on them. You could always find some kind of passive hs, but GeForce 2's get unnervingly hot when running passive. You could rig something up like my gf2 Its still warm, but nothing dangerous You could go with something like a Radeon9200 if you are prepared so spend a little cash. Most are passive and run pretty cool too i'd recomend to stay well, well away from a thunderbird core athlon, they ran damn hot. If you are to get something better, pick up a T-bred 1700+ or 1800+ atleast, IM pretty sure they should work with your board. The new bartons run pretty cool too. The Zalman 7000A is pretty damn good
The board *should* take an athlon XP based chip no probs. KT133 board running in my server doesnt offically support them, but 1700 t/bred b and 1600 Duron applebreds have worked just fine. As for a sub 100 quid card, look at the Geforce 4 Ti's, 4200's can be had for well under 100 quid now. Just make sure its a 2/4* and not one of the "fancy" 8x versions and it'll be fine. SDram will massively limit you so its pointless getting a hugely fast card anyways.
http://www.chillblast.com/customer/product.php?productid=16141 if you dont mind chucking quite a bit of money at it, the swiftech MCX478-v performs awesomely with even the slightest airflow (a papst 80mm NGM @7v is inaudible, and cools very well, or a papst NGML at 12v silent) the downside is that youre looking at about £60 for the heatsink plus a papst or panaflo
The KT7 is 100fsb iirc, so wont take the 133fsb that the KT7A's were designed for, or it will, but the pci will be at 44mhz cause it doesnt have the 1/4 divider. Check your mobo manuf. site to see its cpu compatability. Loose the GF2, the 2D quality was piss poor. Get a el-cheapo Radeon 9200 or FX which will probably be passively cooled too. The difference in quality is immence - recently i upgraded my dad from GF1 to 9200 and now the desktop is not fuzzy at all. Anything more powerful will be wasted on an sdram based board.
I picked up a 9600XT for about £100 from dabs earlier this year, so you should be able to pick up a 9600 vanilla for less. AFAIK every 9600 except the XT is passive cooled. I've got one of those big Zalman coolers and it's great, even passive cooled my A64 for a while (remember kids, fans run better when there's not wires in the way )
ok, thanks for the suggestions folks! I'm still unsure of the processor issue, as the KT7 doesn't officially support the T-bred core, but I've not found anything to say it doesn't (yet) as I said, it's been a while cheers g
Haha that's what's in my brothers system. I'd sell you his for about ten bucks if you know where I can get a 2500+ or 2600+M dirt cheap (like cheaper than newegg ) Know that thunderbirds take a lot of power and as such run pretty hot, so you may need some pretty good cooling. My brother has a thermalright alx800 and a typical 80mm uv green fan which keeps is plenty cool, but it's not overly quiet. A zalman heatsink would keep quiet though. All of the 9600's have active cooling I think (maybe not SE/nonpro, but pro and xt do), although it's so pitiful it's probably worse than passive. If you know what the old abit northbridge coolers looked like on intel boards (not the newer orb style ones), think just that heatsink being passively cooled is about as good as the 9600pro's cooler. At least mine anyways. But I replaced that with a passive zalman heatpipe cooler
