• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

How's this for new boxen?

O

OSUguy98

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - April 2006
Joined
Oct 8, 2003
Messages
3,959
I've been looking into buying an extra boxen or two for the past few months... saving up some $$ for it,etc... (also while saving up money to replace a slowly dying car, saving for a house, and maybe a ring for my girlfriend somewhere down the line)..... How's this for a box?

All prices from newegg...(shipping included)

BIOSTAR "M7VIG 400" KM266 Pro -------------------------------------------- $52.00
AMD 45 Watt Mobile Athlon XP 2400+, 266FSB, 512K Cache ------ $80.49
Corsair Value Select 184 Pin 256MB DDR PC-3200 --------------------- $41.99
FORTRON SOURCE 300W PSU "ATX-300GT" ---------------------------- $28.49
Maxtor 40GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive-----------------------------------------$48.00

Total---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- $250.97

of course the HD is optional if I can relearn linux... or can just use my main box as the source drive that the farm would look for at boot...


Of course, I've heard you can overclock the daylights out of these XP Mobiles... so add a little bit in there for a decent HSF... So $275-285 for a decent overclockable box.... BUT, does this BIOSTAR board allow you to overclock?

Anything that you guys see in there that screams "No, don't get that.... you want ____" ??

Let me know what you guys think..


Keep on Folding!!

 
If my memory serves me correctly, you won't get much of an overclock out of that board. I believe it is an old VIA KM266 chipset. That would be the KT266 chipset with integrated graphics on it. I'm not even sure it would work with the mobile Barton.

I was looking at getting another box for folding a while back when it would look like I had some money. I was going to go for a similar setup to yours except I was looking at the Shuttle AN35 Ultra motherboard I believe. It was an nForce2 motherboard and from what I could tell, overclocked decent. The only thing missing from it I believe is the integrated graphics. For myself I didn't really care about that since I have several old PCI video cards laying around that I could toss in it. You might see if anyone around has the motherboard I suggested since I believe it is around the same price as the Biostar.

Other than that, I see nothing wrong with the setup you have priced.

edit:

Oh yeah, the hard drive is overkill for that kind of machine. I think I have a couple of old hard drives laying around that I was going to use for my secondary folding box that I never had a chance to buy.
 
Yup, this HD would be for the head machine so that I could netboot the future blades from it :D I just can't seem to find anything that's < 40GB....

I must admit my ignorance in the AMD realm over the past 2 yrs or so... I thought that all of the motherboards that supported the same FSB as the non-mobile CPUs would support the Mobile ones too...

Is there any board in the $40-70 range that can overclock the XP mobiles? Abit "VA-10"? (being an Abit guy for the past 6 or 8 years, they tend to overclock well... BUT, I've never bought one of their budget boards... ).... I know that overclockability and cheap tend to be mutually exclusive traits, but is there a decent board out there that'll oveclock fairly well but still be cheap? :D


Keep on Folding!!

 
Careful in what you buy,

You can always buy cheap video cards, but most of my motherboard require a video card to boot, which sucks. If you are going to do a diskless, video cardless, netbooting setup, make sure you get a MB that can boot without a video card... Or get one integrated, I guess.

If there is a trick to getting a MB, say a KT7 Raid, to boot without a video card, please let me know. I tried setting Halt on No Errors, but no avail. I am scrambling on Ebay to get a few cheap video cards. Woot just won a GF 5200 for $31!
 
dr_dirtnap said:
Careful in what you buy,

You can always buy cheap video cards, but most of my motherboard require a video card to boot, which sucks. If you are going to do a diskless, video cardless, netbooting setup, make sure you get a MB that can boot without a video card... Or get one integrated, I guess.

If there is a trick to getting a MB, say a KT7 Raid, to boot without a video card, please let me know. I tried setting Halt on No Errors, but no avail. I am scrambling on Ebay to get a few cheap video cards. Woot just won a GF 5200 for $31!
Click to expand...
dayuhmn...that's cheap! what are you going to use it for?
 
I have to TBirds 1.4's that have no video cards. Just sitting here, I had to pull the video cards for a few rush jobs. Plus I have a A64+ with a GF2 in it. Hahaha, now that is a folding box.
 
dr_dirtnap said:
I have to TBirds 1.4's that have no video cards. Just sitting here, I had to pull the video cards for a few rush jobs. Plus I have a A64+ with a GF2 in it. Hahaha, now that is a folding box.
Click to expand...
heh..that's [H]ard...a nex-gen CPU with a what, 5 year old video card? heh
 
Yeah, that GF2 liked a high AGP bus so I kept it around. Anyway it is sad when you spend more on case fans than you do on a video card!
 
hey... i like my case fans :mad: :(

anyways, yea go to the FS/FT forum and get a nice board from there... actually, buy everything used!
 
jovetata said:
hey... i like my case fans :mad: :(

anyways, yea go to the FS/FT forum and get a nice board from there... actually, buy everything used!
Click to expand...

hmm though, used parts for OCing? How smart is that? Idk, but it would seem safer to go with new parts...

 
USED!!!!!

buy a mobile that u know will do 2.5+... buy a mobo that u know will handle that, ram u KNOW will make it.. u get what i mean :p i got a mobile 2.7 off these boards along with some BH-5. dont underestimate the powa of the [H]ardforum. :cool:
 
newegg refurb section is your friend ;)

probably 85% of all my boxen are from refurb parts from the egg and they are running just fine.

T-3
 
jovetata said:
USED!!!!!

buy a mobile that u know will do 2.5+... buy a mobo that u know will handle that, ram u KNOW will make it.. u get what i mean :p i got a mobile 2.7 off these boards along with some BH-5. dont underestimate the powa of the [H]ardforum. :cool:
Click to expand...
well, i guess if it's off the [H] from someone you trust it's okay..but i mean, would you buy ebay parts to OC w/? If you were serious serious about this OC attempt? Not just throwing a few bucks around...


T-3 said:
newegg refurb section is your friend ;)

probably 85% of all my boxen are from refurb parts from the egg and they are running just fine.

T-3
Click to expand...

heh, i remember last year this thread about newegg refurb horror stories, i guess it's just luck of the draw...
 
OSUguy98 said:
Yup, this HD would be for the head machine so that I could netboot the future blades from it :D I just can't seem to find anything that's < 40GB....

I must admit my ignorance in the AMD realm over the past 2 yrs or so... I thought that all of the motherboards that supported the same FSB as the non-mobile CPUs would support the Mobile ones too...

Is there any board in the $40-70 range that can overclock the XP mobiles? Abit "VA-10"? (being an Abit guy for the past 6 or 8 years, they tend to overclock well... BUT, I've never bought one of their budget boards... ).... I know that overclockability and cheap tend to be mutually exclusive traits, but is there a decent board out there that'll oveclock fairly well but still be cheap? :D


Keep on Folding!!

Click to expand...

I have a VA-10 in my farm and it's not a bad board, but it doesn't have much in the way of options in bios besides fsb speed. No multi's, no vdimm and no vcore selections in bios or by jumper. With that said, I'm running an older unlocked XP2500 on it at 2300 MHz; hard modded the L3's to a 16 multi and L11's for a vcore of 1.85v. It's a damn stable board though, I'll give it that.

The Shuttle AN35-N Ultra that SmokeRngs is talking about is actually a pretty damn nice board; a good friend of mine has one and is running a 2600 mobile in it. Like the NF7-S, it also doesn't have any problems crossing the 12.5 multi range like a lot of nf2 boards do and it has some good overclocking options in bios also.
 
I've had about 90% success with newegg refurbs.
Mostly SMP (MPX) motherboards, 1 out of the 10 or 12 I bought required an RMA...the rest are still running.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top