WHY I LIKE VA503+
Written: Oct 05 '00 (Updated Oct 20 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: runs K6-2 to 550-K6-3 500-Pentium to 233-great for over-clocking
Cons: only 3 PCI-2 isa-does have agp x2 only
The Bottom Line: Fast-handles AT/ATX power supplies-upto a K6-2 550-512 meg PC100 memory-AGP slot-great beta machine
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| dragon1's Full Review: Leadman FIC VA-503+ Motherboard |
WHY FIC
In August of 1999, my computer room got up to 120+degrees-since all my computers(current one)run24/7, it got a little overheated and burned up both the cpu and motherboard.
I went looking for a motherboard/cpu combination I could afford(max set $220). I was looking for a K6-2 300,thinking that would be within my price range. When I found a site that had both for $124+,$12 shipping. The one thing that really surprised me was the K6-2 was a 400.
SPECIFICATIONS from the manual
Bios supports Plug and Play-auto detect ide harddrives,LS-120 drives and IDE Zip drives
processors-Pentium 166/200/233 Mhz
K6 mmx 166/200/233/266/300
K6-2 300/333/350/366/400/450/500/550
K6-3 400 to 500
Cyrix MII 300/333/350
Bus frequency support 66/75/83/95/100/112/124
1 meg Onboard Pipeline Burst Level II write-back cache
Memory support
up to 512 MB Ram using 4 simms of 8,16,32,64,128 FPM and EDO DRAM(this was what I needed at the time as I could not afford the memory I needed)
2 DIMMS OF 8,16,64,128,256 MB with support for EDO dram and Lightning-fast SDRAM(66/100 Mhz)
1 32-bit AGP Bus
3 16 bit ISA Bus
3 32-bit PCI Bus
Inhanced PCI Bus Master IDE Controller with Ultra DMA/33 Support
Onboard IrDA connector
USB support for 2 connectors
Supports both AT and ATX power supplies
From what I had read on the internet this is one the over-clockers love to overclock.
INSTALLING
The installation was easy and fast. As usual(I have built so far abt 10) I missed one jumper and took me 2 hours to find out which one it was.
RUNNING
Now I beta test for MS(Windows Me) and this machine worked very good for me. I had less problems with this machine than a lot of other tester's on theirs. The one thing I like about the VA503+ was it will run on edo ram and you can upgrade to a PC100 memory. Maximum memory is 512 meg.
NEW
Using this motherboard and cpu beta testing Whistler. Working great.
Even Newer
Running Windows XP Pro Final running great. Will be upgrading to a new board/cpu soon.
FOR THE NEWBIES THAT HAVE NEVER DONE THIS
The one piece of advice for anyone that want's to upgrade their machine with a new processor/motherboard, is read any and all the facts on their choice. Many of the manuals for the various motherboards is available off the internet-check them out. Also check and see what others think of your choice.
There are many sites out there that give reviews of motherboards, all you have to do is find them. If you want a couple send me a e-mail and I'll send them to you.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
dragon1
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 in Computer Hardware, Software |
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Member: Michael L Hereid Sr
Location: Clinton, Iowa
Reviews written: 72
Trusted by: 70 members
About Me:
MS Beta Tester since 1997-building my own PC's since 1986/7
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