The old AT motherboards generally had mouse/keyboard connectors on the back edge
of the motherboard. The vast majority of cases they went into had one gigantic steel
plate on the back with slots for add on boards and holes for the M/KB connectors.
The AT power supplies had the old 2 connectors of inline pins that went to the MB.

The newer ATX motherboards have all kinds of ports mounted on the back edge of the board.
LPT, Com, USB, NIC.... in technical terms, a ****load. They don't fit in strictly AT cases at all.
However, generally buying a new motherboard you get an I/O shield that fits around the
ports/connectors on the back of the MB. These are long rectangles designed to fit in a
knockout in the back of the case. If you don't have a knockout in the back of the case, and
you don't want to do all kinds of neat wiring tricks, you have an AT case.

As for your case.... There are different flavors of ATX motherboards. Some are pretty small
on purpose for those who want to build a small system or put a motherboard in a toaster or
a cereal boxG. The same goes for the cases they go into. Your full size(sic) motherboard
ain't a gonna go in that little micro case even if it is a flavor of ATX.

During the transition from AT to ATX motherboard/PS, there were some boards that had
power connectors for Both types of PS connection on them. Having an ATX power supply
in the case is no guarantee that it's an ATX case.

As for PS wattage, get at least a good quality 300watt PS. AMD's site has, or used to have
specs and requirements for how much amperage you need from the PS on each bus;
12volt, 5volt, and 3.3volt. This does not necessarily mean it is enough to run a handful of
hard drives and high current video card.

When I went from an AMD 450 with 8 hard drives, floppy, CD roms to a 1gig Athlon,
my old 220watt PS wouldn't fill the bill. Even removing all but a single drive wouldn't
Post the system. The PS simply wouldn't give the amperage that the Athlon needed.
That was a damn good PC Power & Cooling PS with about 9000 Molex connectors on it.
I sorely missed that old PS....

Perhaps you can see that, all things being equal, my system with 1 15000rpm drive and
7 10000rpm drives and a higher end video card is going to need more wattage.
I understand the CDRWs pull some good wattage too. Not sure just what effect your DVD
will have on the system requirements.

For thermal compound, you're not icing a cake!
At a minimum, you should be able to do several CPUs. It's simply not feasible
to put just enough compound for 1 CPU in a syringe. Spread it thin!
If you think of an actual syringe like you get your flu shot from, there would be enough
thermal compound in the needle itself after the syringe tube was empty to do several
CPUs. Spread it nice and flat (and thin!) with a single edged razorblade.

On 10 Dec 2003 12:58:11 GMT, mmyy (Simon) wrote:

I am in the process of building my first two machines at the same time. I am
planning to build afresh but reuse an two old cases and PSU's. I have found
that my ATX AOpen AMD motherboards I purcahsed (to go with the AMD 2500 and
2600 processors I got) dont physically fit the cases, and one of the PSU's
doesnt fit into the motherbaord connector either (wrong connector at the end)
Am I doing something wrong as the cases I am reusing are not that old (around
late 1999) didnt think building of motherbaords would change so much in that
time. And do I just need an adapter for the PSU or is it a bin job.

By the way can someone clear this up.....why are some PSU's a different wattage
to others. I want to run the usual plus two hard drives and a DVD ROM I wouldnt
need an uprated PSU for this surely. Also with themral compuind do you only get
enough appliacation in the syringes for one CPU/Heatsink or will I be able to
squeeze two out of it.

Many Thanks for everyones help

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