Thinking about upgrading your pc? It's fun and it's easy. Well, maybe not always so easy, but it is rewarding when you get the thing to work again. It can also get kind of expensive.
My system: PII 266 (overclocked to 300), 21" P815 Viewsonic monitor (fantantic!), Atrend ATC-6100 Mainboard (almost as beautiful as Jenny McCarthy -- BIG Caps!), In Win Mid-Tower, Diamond Stealth 3D 3000 with 4 MB VRAM, Diamond Monster 3D Voodoo II with 12 MB EDO RAM, 128 MB EDO RAM, 12 GB WD, 8.4 GB IBM, and 3.1 GB Western Digital Hard Drives, 16x Hitachi CD, 56K Zoom Faxmodem, Creative SB Live, Cambridge SoundWorks MicroWorks Speaker System, 1.5 GB Syquest Removable Hard Drive (bad choice). I put it together from scratch. Not too difficult if you don't mind fighting with Windows 98. Next year it's upgrade to PIII 733+, 64 MB GeForce (unless something better comes out), and maybe an ASUS, ABIT, Microstar, or Gigabyte with 256 MB SDRAM. Good thing I have unlimited funds. Oh, I also have Comcast @Home CABLE internet access. It doesn't get any better!!!
The guy who I bought the CPU, Mainboard, and ATX case from is Bob Odell. Not the absolute cheapest prices but an honest guy who is always available for advice.
Memory Man and NECX Direct are terrific mail order companies from whom I order a lot of my stuff.
April, 2001. Major upgrade, well actually a completely new system built from scratch. After all the hoopla about Intel vs. AMD I decided to make the switch. Intel just cannot keep up (at least until the PIV exceeds 2Ghz). So I chose a 1.2 Ghz Thunderbird Socket A which I easily overclocked to 1.33 Ghz. I paid about $230 at TCWO which is less than 1/3 the cost of my PII 266. HSF is a Thermaltake Volcano II attached with Artic Silver 2 thermal grease. Mainboard is an IWILL KK266 which is built around the KT133A VIA chipset. DDR boards were available at this time but did not provide much more bang for the buck. For memory I installed 2 256 MB sticks of Crucial CL2 SDRAM for 512 MB total. I was only going to install 256 MB but they were soooo cheap ($90 per stick) that I stuck in 2. New case -- Antec 1030 full tower. Wow! They don't get much better then that! Six fans total, two out, one in, one on the P/S, one on the graphics board, one on the cpu. CPU temp @idle is about 20-22C and when maxed out never exceeds 41C. Graphics! Leadtek Winfast Geforce 2 Pro 64MB DDR RAM 4X AGP Video Card for about $200. I can run TFC at 1280x960 with no problems at all, except that the text is so small that I can't read messages from other players! Throw in a Soundblaster Live X-Gamer 5.1, a new IBM 40 GB 7200 RPM drive, a Linksys PCI NIC, and attach my "old" Viewsonic P815 and Cambridge SoundWorks MicroWorks speakers, and there you have it. Needless to say this system is about as fast as you can get right now. Of course it will be outdated in about 6 months so I'd better start saving now for the next go around. Oh, total cost was about $1200, I think.
For tons of information and comparisons of chips, chipsets, motherboards, and other good stuff visit
There are also several newsgroups that discuss motherboards. Here's a few.
alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.abit
alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus
alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.supermicro
alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.tyan
comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
Worried about mail order? Visit Reseller Ratings.
Looking for the best prices? Go here Price Watch.
For Intel bashers.