Advice: Building a new system....

[Spartan]

My old Dell Latitude LM is pissing me off more and more each day so it's time to build a new machine. Here is the configuation that I was thinking of. I'm looking for gotchas that might exist and / or comonents that I should just stay away from:

CPU AMD Athlon 650Mhz $308.15
Mobo ASUS K7M W/ Audio $157.21
HD Maxtor 6800 27.2, 7200 $201.22
Case InWin Q500A 300W $94.71
Memory 128 MB PC100 SDRAM $139.99
Floppy Hi-Val 1.44 MB $16.95
Video Diamond Viper V770 $130.25
KB Microsoft Natual Pro $47.90
Mouse Microsoft Intellimouse $23.89
Modem SupraExpress 56k ISA $66.40
Monitor Hitachi SuperScan 752 $476.98
OS Windows 98 SE OEM Full $94.00
CD-ROM Creative Blaster 48X $48.94

For a grand total of: $1806.59

Note: All prices include shipping and are retail versions.
I want to avoid OEM except for things like Keyboard, mouse, and OS.
I am deferring the purchase of a sound card and DVD-ROM in an effort to save money. The K7M has on-board audio which will be sufficient for now -- and I already have Altec-Lansing speakers.
I plan on moving to a GeForce (or better) when prices come down.

Thanks for your advice.

[Paul V]

Make sure you get a K7M with onboard audio, if you want it, not all models have it.

Also, sometimes the K7M, although it is a good motherboard, won't boot on pressing the power switch. Sol'n temporarily is to press the reset button if it's not booting, I think there's a BIOS upgrade that'll fix it permanently. Never flashed mine yet.

Also, get DVD if you don't already own a DVD player http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif It's one of my fave features of my system (have same processor and MB you do)

[hbooraem]

If you don't mind my throwing my two cents in, keep reading. If you're offended that I'm making minor, nit-picking suggestions, please don't read this.
I would suggest getting PC133 RAM instead of PC100. That way, you can take your RAM with you if you upgrade to a 133MHz bus down the road.
I would also suggest buying an LS-120 drive, if you can afford it, in place of the 3.5" floppy. I can't say enough good things about the LS-120 drive, really.
Bear in mind also, that the Athlon 600 on the market today is very possibly an Athlon 700 marked as a 600, since AMD is getting VERY high yeilds. You might want to save a few dollars, and get a 600MHz Athlon, and overclock it to 650, or to 700.
Just my thoughts on the matter. As always, take anything you read on the 'Net with several LARGE grains of salt.

Dadx6

[plucky duck]

I'd say switch the PC100 to PC133 Brand name Cas2 ram if you're going to be overclocking somewhere down the road.

Is the Supra modem a winmodem or is it full hardware. I've you're going to be fraggin' online, hardware modems will give you a better ping and less of a lag.

With regards to the cdrom, DVD-Rom drives are quite inexpensive these days. I'd get drop the cdrom and get a dvdrom instead, unless you really need to have 2 cdroms in the system, 'cause in the end its just going to be more expensive than getting the dvd drive itself.

Well, that's my (bright and shiny) 2 cents.

[Spartan]

That's exactly the kind of advise I am looking for -- The nit-picky sh*t.

The memory I was eyeballing was from Crucial. Sounds like the thing to do is go for a 600 MHZ and PC133 SDRAM. That should be a wash in the end.

I believe the Supra is hardware driven -- but I could be mistaken. If anyone knows better (or could offer a different modem alltogether) please speak up.

I was eyeballing that Pioneer 10X DVD-ROM which goes for around 100-120 bucks these days. I just don't know if I have a need for a DVD right away. I'm thinking that by the time I need one DVD-RAM will be reasonable??

[pickel]

Spartan: Although I already have one, I was curious as to where you could get the Full
edition of Win 98 2nd Edt. for $ 94.00. The cheapest I've seen the full version was for about $159.95. Some of the other guys might want it at that price. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif
BTW Sounds like a great system, wish you the
best of luck!

[Dominus]

I'd advise *against* onboard sound.

The reviews of the K7M onboard sound have been very bad.

I'd recommend an AWE64 Gold. It's antiquated, but it works in **** near any configuration, and still gives excellent sound.

Many people will suggest the SoundBlaster Live! Value cards, but in my experice, they are nothing but headaches.

Everything else seems OK.

Be careful of IRQ conflicts. The K7M is nitpicky on them, especailly on the USB controller, and devices in the PCI slot under the AGP port. But once they are sorted out, the K7M is an excellent board.

[Spartan]

I went back to the website that advertised the OEM 98 for under $100 bucks and they now said that they are out of stock. If I remember correctly I believe they said they had 4 left when I frist saw it.

Anyhow, when I go visit the site now, it has completely changed in that they say I am attempting to access an "adult" portion of the website and need to input my credit card number just to browse. I don't think so!

I got the site off of pricewatch. It's www.coreconcepts.com (http://www.coreconcepts.com) . Look's like I'll be seaching elsewhere for that piece.

[PerryBoy]

I also need some help. Right now I have a compaq 5070, here are the specs:

AMD K6 350
192mb pc100 ram
onboard ESS Solo sound card
Voodoo3 3000 PCI
onboard SiS 530 video card ( disabled )
2 4gig hard drive
Ricoh MP7040A CDR-W
AZT 4029 Modem ISA
3Com 3C900B Combo NIC PCI

Here are my extra stuff:
SoundBlaster Live sound card
LinkSys NIC
40x CD-ROM

My problem is that Win98 runs fine and detects all my stuff but WinNT and Linux cant. What I want to do is buy another mobo ( with case and power supply ), preferrably one that comes with an AMD 600-700 cpu. I can then take the Voodoo card, 3Com NIC, Ricoh CDR-W, one of the 2 4gig hd, and 2 64megs RAM from the Compaq 5070 and build a whole new system. So hopefully the new system will have:

A new motherboard with AMD CPU
Voodoo3 3000 PCI
SoundBlaster PCI
3Com NIC PCI
3Com Modem ( will buy )
128meg pc100 RAM
Ricoh CDR-W
4gig Seagate HD
3.5 Floppy ( will buy or steal from work > http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

So I guess my question is what's a good motherboard that's compatible with Win98, NT and Linux, and is also compatible with all my existing stuff. I want linux to be my primary OS so it's important that it'll run fine and will detect all devices on the mobo. I'll need the price range and the place/site to get them from. Thanks in advance!

[This message has been edited by PerryBoy (edited 02-08-2000).]

[Paul V]

Dominus: The K7M does tell you which PCI slots share interrupts. The first PCI, fifth PCI, and AGP slots do all share one interrupt. Interrupt sharing is quite possible (I have all 3 of these slots in use and all are working fine) so long as you pay attention to which cards are sharing interrupts, and figure out which cards can easily share. For example, most NICs and most vid cards will work together fine. There will be probs if you just randomly throw cards into place, but if you plan ahead it's perfectly workable.

[Paul V]

Also, check out availability of Asus K7V. It's a newer version of the K7M, which supports PC133 and AGP4x. No idea if it's out or if it's as good as the 7M.

[wyvrn]

Supra Express is a hardware modem. The supra max is the little brother/software version. The Supra express is second only to US robotics line of hardware modems, IMO. Supra Max can be had for 35, but it is not worth the money as someone else said, pings times are horrible and it will eat up cycles on your cpu. You can get the external Express for about 30 bucks more and save that extra internal slot for an add-on down the road, all a matter of pref. here.

Pickel: buy the upgrade of Win98SE and do a clean install. The upgrade is the full version, it just checks to see that you have the cab files from a previous version somewhere, on a hard drive or cd-rom. I setup a two partition hard drive. Load the Windows 95 cab files on the D drive, boot to dos and enable cd-rom support, use the Windows 98 setup program and just type in where the win95 cab files are when it asks you. After Win98 installation, remove the win95 folder with the cab files and you recover your hd space. I did NOT say you had to install the Windows 95 to your system, simply drop the cab files in the Win95 folder on the win95 cd onto a partion of your hard drive. Easy workaround. Hope that helps.

[This message has been edited by wyvrn (edited 02-08-2000).]