Today I finally received the first batch of parts for my K6 system! The motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-5AX revision 4.1 with the latest F4 BIOS, it is equipped with a K6-III 450 MHz and 3 single-sided 256 MB memory modules which don’t work because the Aladdin V chipset can’t handle them…I will have to order double-sided modules.
Gigabyte GA-5AX rev 4.1
A closer look at the ALI Aladdin V north-bridge, it’s branded with a “100 MHz” printing.
ALI Aladdin V Northbridge
Then I tried to fit my Just Cooler P-600 Socket 7/A/370 CPU cooler but it didn’t fit due to some capacitors on the GA-5AX; some fins will have to go away…
The cooler does not fit with the capacitors…
…and here is the (ugly) result after 3 minutes of work with my Dremel. It now fits perfectly! I have ordered another better cooler though but it didn’t arrive yet.
A little Dremel later, it fits…
The case I chose for the K6 is a low-cost but still nicely built Thermaltake V4 Black Edition which costs around 35€ without power supply. The interior is nicely black and no sharp edges stand out so for me it fits my needs…the metal is very thin though and it should be placed in a spot where you don’t continuously hit it with your feet.
The power supply is a new ATX 1.3 compatible LC Power LC420H-12 costing around 20€. It very probably doesn’t deliver the 420W it claims to and the build quality feels minimal…but for a K6 it should not be overloaded and thus provide enough stable power and it’s quiet.
The empty case
The motherboard is now fitted into the case with all the expansion cards:
- ATI All In Wonder Radeon 8500 64MB RAM by Pinnacle
- SoundBlaster 64 audio card
- 3Com 3C905-C 100 Mbits network card
- Promise SATA-300 TX2 Plus SATA controller
- 250GB Western Digital Caviar Blue HDD
The motherboard with all its cards
What kind of OS did you end up installing on it? I would run NT workstation or even a server. Would be nice and fast machine.
I currently have Windows XP on it but I’ll probably install Windows 98SE at some point. NT4 and Server 2003 probably also work fine…my only “problem” now is the SATA controller as it lacks drivers in most old OS. I will probably change it for an IDE to SATA converter so I can use the IDE port on the motherboard to avoid issues.