>I gotta ask... how much Won did this much Wang set you back? I'm
>wondering because my two machines are now so far behind the curve that
>Its now to the point of replacing, rathter than upgrading. Right now
>the specs I'm looking at are:
>
>ATX case W/300 watts
>Slot 1 or A motherboard ATX formfactor
>800 - 1.4 gig clockspeed on the CPU
>256k ram
>AGP, 3 PCI, 1 ISA slots minimum
>EIDE

I got my Abit KT7A and Tbird 1.2 from B-Z-Boyz for a very reasonable price- with the latest BIOS, you can get the 1.2 up to a 1.4 very easily (the Abit SoftBIOS III is very easy to use for overclocking. Be sure to get a good HS/F though; the standard one is a bit on the weak side). If you decide to go with the KT7A, be sure to get the 1.3 series or later boards; they'll support up to the AthlonXP 1600. Also, the KT7A doesn't like you to use all 3 DIMM slots; 2 in any combination of the 3 slots will be fine, but 3 will crash the system on boot.

For about $700 (including shipping)I put the following box together:
Cyclone Case (with 350 watt Fortran power supply)
T-Bird 1.2 (overclocked to only 1.333 because I've been too lazy to flash my BIOS)
Abit KT7A (1.2 series, no RAID support) (AGP, 6 PCI, 1 ISA)
1- 256 MB, PC133
WinCAK copper HSF combo (basically, 1 lb. of copper and a great big fan.)

Note that my case was almost as expensive as the mobo/CPU combo; I knew I was going to overclock and use the case for my next several main gaming boxes.

About the T-Bird CPU: I've had several friends crack their cores when putting on the HSF; that sucker is fragile and seating the HSF can be tricky without a flathead screwdriver or similiar tool. The CPU itself will also burst into flames at the slightest provocation, so a good HSF is a definite must. (My WinCAK is about 4 times the size of the aluminum one that came with my combo).

T.H.