Author Topic: Advice on building a new Nforce based system (Read 390 times)

-ammo- · « **on:** February 18, 2002, 01:41:02 PM »

Hello all. I am building a new computer for a gift to my brother who is financing his way through a Masters degree. Money and time he has not.

This machine will not need externsive 3D graghics capabilities. But it does need the ability to run todays applications at a good speed.

Because of its simplicity, and ease of building, stability (reported stability) I am thinking an Nforce board is the best platform, and either a hi end Duron or lower end Athlon processor. Maybe a 1.13 Tbird, or a 1.3 Gh Duron. Good plan???

Anyway was gonna put a read write CDrom, 20 Gig HD, 128 Mb DDR ram (2, 64 MB sticks) a Modem, extra fan, volcano 5 cooling for CPU, Enlight case, floppy...yadayada:)

Any suggestions, experience? brand/Model of board ??

CavemanJ · « **Reply #1 on:** February 18, 2002, 02:40:53 PM »

I just put one together on an MSI K7N420 Pro board, using the 420d chipset with the onboard video. Works nice, haven't had any stability issues with it (like some of the nightmares on the MSI support forums. eek!). Using the onboard vidow (GF2 mx400) and sound.

Running an Athlon XP 1600+, 1x 256mb PC2100 DDR from Crucial

I'm real happy with it (cept the thing about the keyboard passthrough on my sticks

)

If ya use the MSI board be warned it's real picky about RAM. And BIOS version determines which DIMM slots to use to activate the twinbank memory archeticture.

All in all I'm real happy with it.

-ammo- · « **Reply #2 on:** February 18, 2002, 04:36:08 PM »

Thats the board i was considering. Abit has one comparable in price too. Any notablke difference?

As far as being picky about RAM, i was gonna give it 2 sticks of 64Mb PC2100 from Crucial. Is that OK? I assume you are talking about quality of that RAM?

Animal · « **Reply #3 on:** February 18, 2002, 04:57:22 PM »

Crucual RAM is the best.
I suggest you put a minimum of 256mb if you are going to use WindowsXP.
For that system eich is relatively fast, 128mb will be a bottleneck.

CavemanJ · « **Reply #4 on:** February 18, 2002, 05:17:33 PM »

A friend and I were looking at the abit board and the MSI board, and we went with the MSI one.

What Animal said on the RAM. I'd do 256 min. If you use the onboard video it's gonna take 32mb out of the system memory.
Go to Crucial.com and you can start right on the main page with the drop down menus to show you which ones they recommend and you can order direct from them right there. IIRC they've got 128, 256, and 512 sticks listed as recommended.