Micro atx or mini itx motherboard for pentium 4 / Agp?

Gallospacca

Gallospacca

Gallospacca

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Hi, I have been thinking for a long time about reviving my old and historic pc that has been closed in a box for years and years.

On this occasion I would like to significantly reduce the size with a mini itx or micro atx motherboard if there are any suitable for my components:
Processor: Pentium 4 prescott 3,4ghz socket 478
Video card: Ati radeon Hd 3850 Agp sapphire
Ram: 2 banks of 1GB of ram
The power supply will need new since it was not the best, or used but valid ... obviously I want to spend as little as possible for this nostalgic operation.

The goal is to put everything in a rather small and modern case, with dust filters, space for cable management etc ... all things that the old case does not have (and its huge and ugly), reviving the mythical pc with windows xp.

Specifically: are there any motherboards mini itx or micro atx with socket 478 and Agp slot able to exploit my processor and my video card without compromise?
 
I also really like smaller retro builds but I would strongly recommend M-ATX.

ITX basically limits you to Shuttle systems which are hot, cramped, loud and have limited customisation options due to size, airflow and a wimpy PSU.

MATX was widespread in 478 times and are often cheaper on eBay than standard ATX. I would keep an eye out for a board that has SATA connectors and can boot from SATA, so you can use a modern DVD drive and power supply easily. A late board, which you'll need anyway for the CPU support.

Try to find a board with AGP plus 3 PCI so you can have a dual slot GPU, a gap for airflow, and then a soundcard in the bottom slot for some EAX sound effects (pretty much the only 'Objective' reason for having an XP build).

Do you have a heatsink for your CPU because you can't use a modern one (their compatibility usually stops at 775 or later).
 
Hi, thanks for the answer.

Ok then I'll look for something Micro atx, I have a practically new cpu heatsink that I bought just before I stopped using the pc, I used that pc until mid 2017 as the main pc for both work and gaming, then the motherboard has started giving problems so I built a modern pc, but now since it has been standing still for years I would like to revive it.

As for the bottleneck, I trust what you say but in fact it is the most powerful pentium 4 (or at least one of the most powerful if I remember correctly) and I would like to reuse it, I would use this pc for retrogaming, I already have a modern and rather powerful pc which allows me to play today's games well, so it's not a problem, games from his era (and beyond) ran really well.

Of course I will use a hd monitor that I have.

I just need to buy a decent PSU, a new pretty compact case with decent airflow (prescotts get hot haha) and of course a new motherboard as compact as possible.

Except that not being very experienced I would like some information not to risk taking a motherboard that is not perfectly compatible or that then gives me problems, maybe if I find something that seems suitable before buying I write here the model of the motherboard so you can give me confirmation.
 
almoststew1990 said:
I also really like smaller retro builds but I would strongly recommend M-ATX.

ITX basically limits you to Shuttle systems which are hot, cramped, loud and have limited customisation options due to size, airflow and a wimpy PSU.

MATX was widespread in 478 times and are often cheaper on eBay than standard ATX. I would keep an eye out for a board that has SATA connectors and can boot from SATA, so you can use a modern DVD drive and power supply easily. A late board, which you'll need anyway for the CPU support.

Try to find a board with AGP plus 3 PCI so you can have a dual slot GPU, a gap for airflow, and then a soundcard in the bottom slot for some EAX sound effects (pretty much the only 'Objective' reason for having an XP build).

Do you have a heatsink for your CPU because you can't use a modern one (their compatibility usually stops at 775 or later).
Click to expand...
I have to disagree with your description of the Shuttle systems to be honest. They are indeed small and tight for space, but with a decent fan and good thermal paste, they don’t have to be stupidly hot. Back in the day, I ran a northwood 1.8A at around 140fsb for a 2.5GHz CPU with no ill effects, this would have been coupled with a GeForce 4 Ti4400 and latterly a Radeon 9800 PRO running at XT speeds.

As for the PSUs, sure they were only a mediocre wattage, but they were quality units with strong rails and stable voltages. Overall wattage never tells the full story with a PSU. The other good thing is that replacement PSUs are still obtainable.

Sure, you can get cooler running systems if you size up to mATX, but the size delta is quite large!
 
I had a nice small P4 ITX system. Things always ran to hot inside due to poor airflow and other things. I ended up finding a socket 370 board to fit it and even though the board fitted... it was the smallest I could find it still overlapped a tiny bit into the PSU section so I then had to look for a slimmer PSU. The case is blue and beige so fitted in with the Pentium III era nicely running..... you guessed it Windows 98 SE.

You might encounter poor air flow but if you like the case and want a retro system maybe a small less powerful board might be better for the enclosure.
 
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