Pardon the insurrection, but I was wallowing about on this board several months ago regarding the dreaded Soyo K7VME barebones kit from Tiger Direct. I'm an all-Mac, all-the-time ex-graphic repairman who now owns a retail biz (hobby shop), and am forced, for technical reasons, to go to the Dark Side (sorry -- Windows gives me the creeps, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do). Having for many years worked as an electronics assembler (and NASA-certified solderer) in the aircraft industry, I thought putting a mere computer together would be the proverbial piece o' cake. God, how I tried to make that crappy box work, but no matter what I did, following the excellent suggestions from this forum and others, and MechBgon's first-time PC-builder's guide religiously, I could never get the pig to POST. Soyo posited a bad mobo, and sent me a new one. I actually DID have a bad Athlon XP2800+, which got RMA'd, and I replaced that with the XP3000+.
Then life intervened, and I had to let the project sit for a while. A long while. Empires rose and fell, but more importantly, the Athlon 64 was introduced, which put me in a philosophical dilemma: should I stick with the Soyo K7VME and Athlon XP3000+, both of which have never been used (the XP2800 is still in its sealed package), or should I sell the board and chip on eBay (the Soyo power-supply-right-on-top-of-cpu-fan case is majorly modified, with the PS relocated to the floor of the case where it exhausts through a big hole I cut in the side panel, so I'm more or less stuck with the case and PS), OR should I spring for an Athlon 64-based bare-bones system, which NewEgg has for @$250.00 or so? Most of the ancillaries I bought for the Soyo box will transfer over (see system configuration below), and the benefits of Hyper-Threading and what I hope is greater bus speed would be a groove thang. I realize I'll lose some money on the deal, but what I'm NOT sure of is if the benefits of an A64 outweigh the money-down-the-drain factor by enough to recommend going with the 64.
That's my dilemma. I'd be most grateful for opinions (but not about Macs, please -- I fought that battle about 16 years ago, thanks). I'd also like to know which of the components listed below will transfer to an Athlon 64 system. Also, every A64 box I've seen is of the mini-squat form factor -- is that the deal now?
You can reply here or by email:
wingswheels@sbcglobal.net
Oh yeah, and the use this box will be put to is POS, accessing a couple of my nitwit distributors who use Windows-only online ordering systems, and -- the one area I will readily admit PCs have it all over Macs -- games; especially Grand Prix Legends.
Thanks for the insurrection and my wife and I would like to join you now as we return to another thrilling episode of Nick Danger, Third Eye.
Bart Brown
The beast in question:
Soyo K7VME/Athlon 3000XP+ (Barton)/Thermaltake TR2 M2
Ultra PC2700 DDR 333MHz 512MB x 2
Chaintech GeForce FX 5700 / 256MB DDR / AGP 8X
Western Digital Caviar 200GB HD
52X generic CD-ROM drive (Master on IDE2)
Megastor (NEC) Dual Layer DVD Burner combo drive
Mitsumi FDD/multi-media reader
Oh yeah, and Windows (shudder) XP Home...
Then life intervened, and I had to let the project sit for a while. A long while. Empires rose and fell, but more importantly, the Athlon 64 was introduced, which put me in a philosophical dilemma: should I stick with the Soyo K7VME and Athlon XP3000+, both of which have never been used (the XP2800 is still in its sealed package), or should I sell the board and chip on eBay (the Soyo power-supply-right-on-top-of-cpu-fan case is majorly modified, with the PS relocated to the floor of the case where it exhausts through a big hole I cut in the side panel, so I'm more or less stuck with the case and PS), OR should I spring for an Athlon 64-based bare-bones system, which NewEgg has for @$250.00 or so? Most of the ancillaries I bought for the Soyo box will transfer over (see system configuration below), and the benefits of Hyper-Threading and what I hope is greater bus speed would be a groove thang. I realize I'll lose some money on the deal, but what I'm NOT sure of is if the benefits of an A64 outweigh the money-down-the-drain factor by enough to recommend going with the 64.
That's my dilemma. I'd be most grateful for opinions (but not about Macs, please -- I fought that battle about 16 years ago, thanks). I'd also like to know which of the components listed below will transfer to an Athlon 64 system. Also, every A64 box I've seen is of the mini-squat form factor -- is that the deal now?
You can reply here or by email:
wingswheels@sbcglobal.net
Oh yeah, and the use this box will be put to is POS, accessing a couple of my nitwit distributors who use Windows-only online ordering systems, and -- the one area I will readily admit PCs have it all over Macs -- games; especially Grand Prix Legends.
Thanks for the insurrection and my wife and I would like to join you now as we return to another thrilling episode of Nick Danger, Third Eye.
Bart Brown
The beast in question:
Soyo K7VME/Athlon 3000XP+ (Barton)/Thermaltake TR2 M2
Ultra PC2700 DDR 333MHz 512MB x 2
Chaintech GeForce FX 5700 / 256MB DDR / AGP 8X
Western Digital Caviar 200GB HD
52X generic CD-ROM drive (Master on IDE2)
Megastor (NEC) Dual Layer DVD Burner combo drive
Mitsumi FDD/multi-media reader
Oh yeah, and Windows (shudder) XP Home...