Simple questions about a Athlon Slot A 750

[Mitzi]

I've just brought an old ASUS K7V Slot A VIA KX133 and Athlon Slot A 750 off a friend. Its going to be used to replace an old Pentium 233 MMX we have lying around here.

I'll be picking it up tonight but before I do I have some simple questions...

Question 1 : what sort of RAM would the above CPU take? PC100 or PC133?

Question 2 : I have an generic 230 watt PSU here, do you think that would be sufficient for it? I won't overclock it, and the only other things in the machine will be an old Matrox PCI graphics card, a 10/100 NIC and a 8Gb HDD. I guess I'll try it and see how it goes.

Cheers in advance.

 

[jakethemuss]

Hi Mitzi,
This is the Via site that tells you a bit about the kx133. Looks like it takes PC133 ram.
I'm not sure about the ps sorry, I suspect 230 would be boarderline though.

 

[Mitzi]

Cheers for the link.

It does like it takes PC100/133 ram. I guess I'll need to install the Via 4 in 1s for that motherboard too, I forgot about that

With regards to the PSU, I'll just give it a go and see how I get on.

 

[whpromo]

Hi!
May be a little late with this reply, but I'm running a 700MHz Slot A on ASUS K7M mobo, 300W PSU. When I researched to spec it out, I was given the impression that 250W was min, but also had to look at impedance and such...things I know very little about, sorry. But I had a tech friend who works on AMD tell me that you could run 230 Watt if it was a quality PSU, and if you didn't run a graphics card (AGP) or PCI cards that were power hogs. From what you've described, you shouldn't have any problems (knock on wood!) I do see a lot of OEM boxes out there with a generic 230 watt PSU in them.

Good luck with it !

I have a question for you. I've run into a roadblock with my K7M. It seems it has problems with full ACPI compatibility. I also want to lose the ISA slot that comes with my K7M. I am considering the K7V as a replacement. How do you like your setup so far? Any advice on things to watch for?

Thanks!

 

[Mitzi]

I have a question for you. I've run into a roadblock with my K7M. It seems it has problems with full ACPI compatibility. I also want to lose the ISA slot that comes with my K7M. I am considering the K7V as a replacement. How do you like your setup so far? Any advice on things to watch for?


Hi, thanks for your reply whpromo. Its for a secondary machine which was to utilize some of the spare parts I've got lying around. I built it last weekend using the 230watt PSU and everything is running fine. I'll let you know what I've got in there...

Athlon 750@1000Mhz
K7V Mobo
Matrox G400 32Mb AGP graphics card
128Mb PC133 RAM
4.6Gb HDD
2.7Gb HDD
48x CDROM
80mm fan
60mm fan
2 x 40mm fans (on the heatsink).

So I'm pretty impressed that the 230 watt PSU is powering it all (its a generic brand BTW!).

The K7V board is fine - totally stable, no problems getting it working but I don't know if I would recommend it if you have to pay full retail price for it.Y'see the reason why I brought it is because it cost me £40 ($56) and that included HSF, 128Mb and the processor (the parts were secondhand)!

The only problem with the board I've found is the memory slots are in a bad position. The HSF on the processor is so big it actually blocks the first two memory slots so I can only utilize the last memory slot I know I could easily go and buy another HSF but at the moment 128Mb is fine. Just something you should be aware of if you have a big heatsink/fan.

Perhaps it would be more cost efficient for you to buy a more up to date board which supports Athlon XPs? If you are low on cash you could always get a cheap Duron for the time being to go with it? Just a suggestion.

Let me know what you decide to do, anyway.

 

[whpromo]

Thanks for the info.

I really don't need the XP power, at least not yet. The budget won't allow it either until fall at the earliest.

As for the space issue, yes, the K7M has similar issues, however the cooling solution I have on my processor is not enormous, and I don't plan to overclock. The four things I'm looking for in a mobo are:

1) accepts Slot A Athlon (classic)
2) compatible with ACPI (K7M has an issue with this)
3) PCI only, not ISA slots slowing down the bus speeds.
4) Accepts my Crucial PC100 SDRAM (768MB)

I'm not looking for a gamer speed demon here, just a real solid workhorse setup. Think Clydesdale.

Up until now this Athlon 700MHz/K7M has been just that. But my inability to add a Visiontek Everything AGP video Card for video editing is what started me looking for a better solution. Apparently, the K7M board is not able to give me the ACPI compatability I need to make it work. And according to a tech friend, the ISA slot on the board is giving me a big performance hit on my SCSI drives.

So far, the K7V is the only board that seems to fit my criteria. Still doing the research though.

Regards.