Socket 754, Sempron 64 system on the cheap

[Huh]

I need a cheap socket 754 64 sempron system.
Need case, cpu, and memory. Got the rest of the stuff:
Got two hard drives (ata100, so don't need SATA), old GeForce4 Ti-4200, even older Aureal 8830 soundcard (but its good).

The PC will mainly be used as a CAD workstation/HTPC with a Hauppage nova-t USB2, but light gaming should be possible. In addition, I want it to be small(ish, doesnt have to be SFF smal), as my current rig is a large Aopen server tower and it wont fit under the desk. Additionally, I want the case to be black and simple (meaning NO neon-lights nor flashy metallic stuff).

So far I've come up with these two options (All from ebuyer. never had a problem with ebuyer, been using them for the last 3 years).

Asus Vintage-AE1 Socket 754 - AMD Sempron/Athlon 64 VGA SOUND LAN (SiS760GX) 094800 £63.40
AMD Sempron 2600+ (SDA2600BXBOX) 64 Bit Architecture 1.6Ghz Skt 754 Box 094646 £37.95
Kingston 512MB DDR PC3200 400MHz CL3 Memory Module
049294 £25.84
Cart Total: £127.19 ex. vat
OR

ECS K8 NVIDIA Socket 754 DDR400 AGP (P21110) NFORCE3-A ATX Retail Box 090410 £27.22
Hiper 350W Single Fan Low Noise PSU
098570 £14.97
AMD Sempron 2600+ (SDA2600BXBOX) 64 Bit Architecture 1.6Ghz Skt 754 Box 094646 £37.95
Kingston 512MB DDR PC3200 400MHz CL3 Memory Module
049294 £25.84
Cart Total: £105.98 ex. vat

The last option lacks a case, as I haven't found a cheap one that satisfies what I'm after.
Additionally, I'm not certain about the quality of the mainboard in option 2. ECS don't come to mind when it comes to quality. And do I really need a nforce3 mobo, as I won't be using SATA and probably no overclocking. What other mobo's are suitable?

Option 1: I am a little uncertain about noise, quality of the SiS chipset (SiS = crap?) and if the PSU gives enough juice. The positive side is that it has both an AGP and a PCI-e slot.

Thanks

[tungst3n]

When getting systems with both an AGP slot and PCI-Ex 16 slots check the reviews for the mobo.

Some have the AGP connection direct to the basic 32 Bit PCI bus (V Slow)

Some have a butchered PCI-Express slot which will only work with certain cards.

The only board with both AGP and PCI-Express 16 with no real drawbacks was the ASRock 939Dual-SATA2. The only drawback mentioned on the variety of reviews was it was upto 5% slower than its mainstream competitiors (Something that may be fixed with bios updates). The board itself has got loads of glowing report plus its cheap £48 which is cheap for a 939 Board - just limits you with processors.

In regard to a simple classy black case - Antek SLK300B http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Product...0031&GroupID=8 Great reviews plus build quality

[Huh]

Thanks for informing me of the PCI-e issue. I found out that it isn't even a 16x1 PCI-e slot, but a 1x1 (?). However, the PCI-e part isn't that important for me as this won't be a PC that I'll upgrade in the future.

The motherboard in the vintage-AE1 is the Asus K8S-MV, which is as I've understood, very similar to the Asus K8S-MX. Anyone had any experience with it?

Was looking at going down a technology step to buy an Asus a7vt400 with a sempron (non 64) 2400, but the price difference was minimal from the 64 bit system so I'll skip that. The only positive was that the a7vt400 case is much smaller in size that then vintage-AE1.

[DigiGuru]

I've got a Vintage AE1 case... just remember if you want to run a 64-bit processor, get the latest BETA bios BEFORE you install it all, hold Alt+F2 at startup and let it boot off the floppy/cdrom

Easy way is to copy the CD that comes with it and replace the 2 bios files using UltraISO then re-burn it

[Huh]

Could you tell me more about the Vintage-AE1?
Is it noisy? Does the beta bios support 64 Sempron rev. 6?

Read about the UliRaid hogging the cpu, but just disabling it in windows fixes it.
Any other quirks you know of?

[DigiGuru]

Not that I know of yet... the fan controllers are temperature dependant, so if its hotting up, it can be quite noisy, but for the most part, no, its quite quiet.

I've got a Sempron 64 2600+ in there at the moment... needed the beta bios to do it, but it works flawlessly now

[Huh]

Well, I've gone and ordered the Vintage-AE1 with a 64 sempron 2600+.

About the beta bios:
I see that there is a newer bios than the beta (505 released 07/11/2005). It doesn't say what's been fixed so I guess I'll try the official first, unless you know if has any drawbacks compared to the beta.

beta = 501, new official = 505

[DigiGuru]

Go for the official mate, they beta was the only one available when I built the system last weekend

Thanks for the heads up though, will put the new bios on this weekend (Its my landlord's new system I built... £210 for an entire system )