I had never seen the board with that large VRM heatsink before. Looks really cool.
Does the heatsink get hot or is it more for show? I have a rev 1.04 and the VRMs get a bit toasty bot certainly stay within specification.

Not sure, I haven't used the motherboard yet. Just now I powered it on for the first time, it went into BIOS, so I guess it works fine, Im sending the seller positive feedback. The VRM heatsink is loose, looks like the screws that hold the motherboard to the case are supposed to hold it in place. It has thermal pads underneath that are all messed up. I should probably replace them.

God Of Gaming wrote on 2020-05-05, 08:04:

but I think this Athlon 700 is cooler, because for the majority of 1999 you had P3 Katmai up to 600mhz and these first gen Athlons that were kicking its ass, even the lowest 500mhz Athlon was faster.

I'd say Slot A is cooler over all simply due to being a lot more rare!

Re Sound Live drives are becoming harder and harder to get for a good price. I'd just get the card for now and keep your eyes open for the LiveDrive, it may even work out cheaper getting it separate.

ISA slot, I put a 2nd hand Vibra16 in my P2/400 for dos games in 98. So it's period correct in that people were doing it back then even if the hardware itself was much older.

Hard drive, yeh SCSI would have been king but hard to justify now. I'd go for some "massive" IDE drive

Quick google found this mag from Jan 2000, great sources for period builds. If you look harder you can prob find one closer to your date.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UEgKC-lu4 … epage&q&f=false
Page 205 has a hardware list largest drive is the 37GB IBM37GP 5400rpm, Other manufactures have 27GB 7200RPM drives so your looking something round that mark.

Optical drive you can either go with 6x DVD "that was the thing to get in 99" CD burners were also not mainstream (I was the only one in our group that had one) it was common to have both a burner and a ROM drive if you want to be authentic.

Well, the point for this is to be a dream PC, something you would have lusted over but couldn't afford, so even if CD burners and DVDs werent mainstream yet, as long as they existed and were available to buy, for a hefty price back then but cheap now, I'd want them 😀 As for the ISA thing, of course you can use older parts and not everything has to be released in the particular year, normally, but I would be doing other <year> builds as well where those would go, for example an AWE64 Gold would go into my eventual 1996 build, that I have pretty much no parts for yet sadly, so I shouldn't also put one in this 1999 build, but then again I don't want to leave the ISA slot unused when its available... 2000+ builds wont have ISA slots I guess, and theres period correct isa sound cards up to 97, so I guess 98 and 99 build are the only two that I have to figure something out for. AWE64 Legacy if I can get one will probably go into this 99 build, and for 98 build, idk, I have some isa card with yamaha 719E-S chip on it, I have no idea what it is or when it was released, with some luck it could be a 98 card?

took a while, but the voodoo3 is finally in my hands... dayum, that cable is thicc af

Looking at the back pic, this should count as a full tower, look how tall it is. I dislike cases this big, they take up too much space. That's why I'm not gonna use the Chieftec Dragon, even tho its considered the ultimate 1999 case, just because it's this big as well.

Guys, I need your input on something. Absolute ultimate 1999 PC if I decide to go for that would be using some op parts released in late december 99 - either Intel OR840 motherboard or Compaq Pro Workstation AP550, with dual PIII-800EB and gf256 ddr. Thing is, there just happens to be one Compaq AP550 listed locally for just 25 euros and i should probably nab it while I can, but, it comes with a single PIII-1000 and it lacks the VRM module needed for installing 2 CPUs (a small slot at the very top of the motherboard). If I try to check on ebay for compaq ap550 vrm module, nothing comes up, but if I just type compaq vrm module, I see some results for one for different compaq proliant 800 server, that looks pretty much identical visually to the one that I do need here. Would it be compatible, or will I kill the motherboard if I try it 😀

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/COMPAQ-299307-001- … 9MAAOSwS0peoMq8

there's also this vrm module from compaq proliant ml370 server that looks even more identical to the ap550 module:

https://www.ebay.de/itm/Compaq-320266-001-329 … MQAAOSwDXxchpQC

And another question, do I need two slot 1 piii-800eb? As I dont want to have 2 absolutely identical parts in my collection, at a risk to make it look uglier visually, can I have one slot 1 piii-800eb and one socket 370 piii-800eb on a slotket and have them work together properly on the ap550, or there will be issues because they're not absolutely identical even if they are same speed?

I'd grab it if you can. If I'm remembering correctly most of those vrms are interchangeable.

Good to know, I'm taking it then.... geez, this thing looks heavy, even tho it's not far, delivery gonna kill me for sure... oh well

So, my other question, can one of the cpus be s.370 model on a slotket, or do they both need to be absolutely identical?

God Of Gaming wrote on 2020-05-26, 10:33:

Good to know, I'm taking it then.... geez, this thing looks heavy, even tho it's not far, delivery gonna kill me for sure... oh well

So, my other question, can one of the cpus be s.370 model on a slotket, or do they both need to be absolutely identical?

Technically they need to be identical, well same stepping to be be more exact.
Reality is on my Asus P2B-DS I ran 2 different P2 400's and apart from an entry in the event log it ran just fine.

I would think it would be the same for you as long as the slocket is SMP compatible (Not all are) and your running both a Slot 1 and a S370 800eb.
BUT
That's based on generic hardware, I've no idea how flexible an OEM system like Compaq will be. I'd give you a 50/50 chance at best.

Really though if you don't want 2 identical CPU's then a dual rig probably isn't for you.
I get not wanting 2 of the same CPU's cost wise but its like saying you don't want 2 sticks of matching ram in a dual channel setup, that's kind of of the whole point!

And this takes care of sound. Now only the quantum atlas 10k 36.4gb scsi hdd left to find for a reasonable price before this machine can get up and running.

Excellent find! great price with the live drive too

sigh... wasn't such a great price after all. It got delivered just now, and, asside from it being very badly packed with no padding or protection, very yellowed and very very dirty... its just the live drive ii panel, no sb live ct4760 included in the package... granted, it wasnt pictured in the photo either, but I assumed its included because the title of the listing was "Sound Blaster Live PCI card CT 4760 with Live Drive II CT 4860 combo". What do I do with this guy now, I smell a negative rating coming.

On another topic, I bought locally a PC with dual slot 1 tyan board with dual pentium 3 and voodoo2 SLI for a good price, the parts are not exactly 1999, but its a bit too early to make "dream 1998 pc" and "dream 2000 pc" threads as I dont have anywhere near enough parts for those, so I thought I might just mention it here for now

Sorry to hear that the title is misleading. But nice find on the dual p3 and voodoo 2's that'll make for a very fun system.

well, it will be split into separate systems, the voodoo2 sli pair will go into a 1998 build with pentium ii, while the dual P3 will be paired with a GF2 Ultra for y2000 once I find one (why are these so rare now? they were so easy to find a couple of years ago, when I wasnt looking for them?)

They both sound like fun systems. That's why I picked up a GeForce 4 mx460 there cheap and preform on par with the GeForce 2 ultra.

Quick update, I got a hold of two examples of the world's first GPU - the GeForce 256. One is a SDR model by Inno3D, the other a DDR model by Creative. the 256 SDR being released in october 99 and the 256 DDR in december 99, I think I'm right to say these would be the ultimate 1999 graphics cards, at least as far as raw performance is concerned, I still find the voodoo3 a lot more interesting tho, but it's not exactly ultimate if outperformed so badly is it 😉

Major update, I got a hold of the unicorn, the Intel OR840 !!!

So I now have the ultimate motherboard, graphics card and sound card... That's all the major components accounted for. I need a pair of cpus and some rdram, and hard drives.... ideally also a cooler maser atc-100 case, but that's another unicorn to hunt for

Oh that's a sweet platform to work with. Happy hunting for your other parts. Can't wait to see the finished system.