New Motherboard/CPU Suggestions? (kinda long)

[Steve_123]

Well, my motherboard has gone bad. Not totally though, the machine still boots up but acts very funny. Won't detect my modem, well it detects it but not correctly and gives it some odd port and IRQ. I have IRQs that are not there and the USB ports are gone.

It's a cheap Super7 board with the Via MVP3 chipset, a K6-2 300 cpu and 64 MB EDO RAM.

I have tried everything. Fresh installs of Win98, removed all hardware except for the minimal stuff, swapped video boards. Nothing made a difference. It had been freezing up a couple times a day for the past few weeks, but now it's really bad.

It has to be one of three things that is messed up, either the board, CPU or the RAM. I want to upgrade as well so I want to replace all three.

What I need to know is what to buy? Like what board and CPU as well as how much ram I should get. I'm kinda on a budget so, I need it to be cost effective. Also I have an AT style mid tower case, not an ATX which may cause a problem. I don't mind overclocking, that's fine with me. Possibly a Celeron? What do you all think?

I use my computer for mostly internet, games and a little word processing/spreadsheet stuff.

Here's my current setup:
AT Mid Tower case
Super 7 motherboard
K6-2 300 CPU
64MB EDO RAM
Intel 740 AGP video board with 8MB.
56K ISA modem
SB AWE 64 ISA card.
8.4 gig UDMA hard drive
24X IDE cdrom
2x2x24 IDE cd writer.

Also what is a good place to order parts from?

Any suggestions would be appreciated
Thanks.

[tlwhite76]

Recommend you look at ABIT,excellent for OC, reasonable prices. Same goes for the Intel Celeron chip, very solid and cheap. Everyone has got their favorite online stores. I happen to like www.atacom.com (http://www.atacom.com)

They ship quickly and have treated me very good in the past when it came to RMA support.

Good Luck.

[ram]

I just got a Asus P5A its an ATX so youd have to get a new case also.Got a AMDk62 350 running at 400mhz on it now and can go up to 600mhz chip.For my new case/w/power supply and MB paid $170 then put all the old stuff
from my old system in it,with the exception of the memmory, i got new PC100 chips.Runs like crazy, good system.

[neo_otyugh]

you can get an AMD k6-2 400 for about $40 or so, and so far i have had nothing but good experiences with this processor. i can only get it to overclock to 472.5, but there are others who have it 500 and way beyond with them. a celeron would also be a good choice as well, but i am partial to amd. if you go with the amd the fic va-503+ is a good board to go with it. i figure that for about $155 or so, maybe a little more with shipping you should be able to get a k6-2 400, va-503+ and 64 megs of ram.

[Steve_123]

Basically I'm trying to decide whether to go with a Celeron or an AMD. I've had nothing but trouble with the AMD based system I have now. But A friend of mine has a K6-2 450 and loves it. He's never had a problem. So I really don't know. Whatever I get, I want it to be decently fast and be quicker than what I have now. I know I need new ram, because the stuff I have is 72 pin EDO.

Another thing to consider. Also a friend of mine gave me his old processor. It's a PII 350. He's not sure if it's good or not. He upgraded his system a while back and has had it laying around for a while. Something went wrong with his computer that's why he upgraded. I'm not sure what went bad. I really don't have a way to test it.

So if I got something with a slot 1. I may be able to use this processor, if it's still good.

Thanks.