Cifrancis.com » Custom PC II (1999)

Custom built PC II
Built in January 1999

Intel Celeron 366 (overclocked to 550Mhz) with 384MB of memory and 80GB HD space.
Last Update: June 22, 2001

Intro:

Well, the P-133 machine I built in Spring of 96 (which was eventually upgraded to a Pentium 200 w/ 128MB of memory) had started to show its age. So I started thinking about upgrading. I was starting to consider a Pentium II 450 Mhz system with 128MB of memory. The only gotcha was that the Pentium II 450 was about $550 for the CPU alone. But then something incredible came about in the PC hardware world. The Intel Celeron 300a and the Abit BH6 motherboard. With the Celeron 300a and the Abit BH6 motherboard, you can make the 300Mhz Celeron overclock to perform like a Pentium II 450 for about 1/5 of the price!! (It was $85 at the time I bought it, but they can be had for $65 at the time of this writing.) This was too good a deal to pass up. For the details about overclocking the Celeron , check out Sharky Extreme’s Celeron Overclocking Guide. which can explain how it works (better than I could). Also, see at the bottom of this page for more info on overclocking.

5-28-2000 Update: I upgraded the Celeron 300a (running at 450) with a Celeron 366 (overclocked to 550). Also bought a Creative Labs Annihilator Pro video card (removed the Matrox G200 and the Diamond Monster II).

7-23-2000 Update: I Replaced my 17″ NEC XE17 monitor with a 22″ Mitsubishi Diamond Plus 200 Monitor. I added an EPSON 1270 Color Photo Printer (awesome photo quality!) Added a Maxtor 40GB 7200RPM Hard Drive as well as an Entegra 4 Port USB Hub

11-27-2000 Update: I added an additional 128MB of memory to my PC for a total now of 256MB. I replaced my CDROM drive with a Samsung SD-612 DVDROM drive. I replaced my Diamond Monster MX300 soundcard with a Sound Blaster Live! X-Gamer 5.1 because I was having too many problems with the MX300. For one thing the MX300 isn’t being made anymore and the drivers haven’t been updated in a long time. There are also issues with the Gameport on the card as well (although as more and more controllers become USB this won’t be an issue but I still use a Panther XL that uses the gameport so it is important that it works.)

04-07-2001 Update: I had to replace my Maxtor 17GB Hard Drive since it appeared to be starting to fail with a 40GB 7200RPM ATA100 Maxtor DiamondMax Plus.

06-22-2001 Update: I added an additional 128MB of memory to my system (for a total of 384MB) and I bought I Nikon Coolscan IV ED Film Scanner.

This machine is starting to show its age especially since I am running a 733Mhz machine at work. Although most people would find the machine very acceptable, as a 3D gamer I am going to need something a bit faster for the next generation games. I will probably be looking to build a new machine sometime in mid to late 2001 with probably an AMD processor (probably at least a 1.5GHz processor). I am waiting for the new version of the AMD Athlon (codenamed Palamino) which runs cooler and uses less power. The next machine should be fairly inexpensive to build considering how cheap, memory, CPU’s and Hard Drives currently are. I will have to upgrade the motherboard, processor and memory (I already bought the case… a very nice ANTEC SX-840). At that time I will probably also buy a Nvidia Geforce 3 video card. Haven’t decided if I will carry over all the other components (drives, cards etc…) from the PC described on this page or build a whole new machine. Stay tuned…

Here are all the details of the current system….

Motherboard: Abit BH6 motherboard v1.01

CPU: Intel Celeron 366 overclocked to 550Mhz

Operating System: Microsoft Windows 98 2nd Edition (the most expensive Windows 95 Service Pack ever released!

Memory: 256MB (Mushkin 128MB SDRAM PC100 CAS2 -GH, and a 128MB 8ns Micron module)

Audio: Soundblaster Live! X-Gamer 5.1 (This replaced my Diamond MX300. Stick with Creative for your soundcards folks. I learned the hard way).

Video: Creative Labs Annihilator Pro (a Geforce 256 based card with 32MB of memory. This has been made obsolete by the new Geforce 2 and Geforce 2 Ultra cards, which will be made obsolete by the new cards based on nVidia’s NV20 chipset which is 7 times faster than the Geforce 2’s).

Floppy Drive: Sony 1.44MB floppy (does anyone even use these anymore??)

Disk Controller: Adaptec 2940 PCI SCSI Master Controller (controls my 6.4GB Hard Drive, CD-R, Tape Drive and Scanner).

Hard Drives: Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40 Ultra DMA 66 (40GB) UltraDMA 66 EIDE HD
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 60 Ultra DMA 100 (40GB) UltraDMA 100 EIDE HDNew
TOTAL HARD DRIVE SPACE = Approx 80GB

DVDROM: Samsung SD-612 12X DVD 40X DROM Drive (EIDE)

CD-R: Panasonic 7502B 4X SCSI CDROM Burner.

Printer: EPSON Stylus Photo 1270 (unbelievable photo quality prints)

Scanners: HP Scanjet 3c (24bit color scanner. SCSI)
Nikon Coolscan IV ED (2900 dpi Film Scanner)New

Video Capture: Snappy from Play Inc. (for still image capture)
Dazzle Digital Video Creator from Dazzle Inc. (for still image and movie capture)

Ethernet Interface Card: 3ComFast EtherLink XL (3C905-TX, PCI, 10/100 (RJ-45)

Cable Modem: Motorola Cybersurfer

Modem: U.S. Robotics Courier V.everything (X2 56K capable external fax modem)

Monitor: Mitsubishi Diamond Plus 200 (an excellent 22″ inch (20″ viewable) flat screen color monitor)

Speakers: NEC Audio Tower Speaker System
IBM Subwolfer

Mouse: Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical (cool optical mouse that works on any surface!)

USB Hub: Entegra (now Xircom) 4 Port HubNew