Athlon MP

[Mike Fishcake]

Hi, not sure if this is the correct place to post this, but we desperately need a single Athlon MP 2200, as we have a faulty one here. Problem is, because it's for work, we can't order from private individuals, so most of ebay won't be suitable. Anyone got any magical ideas?

[nichomach]

Can I suggest that you might not have much option than to replace both? You can pick up MP2800s for not ludicrous amounts these days - PCW Business list availability at 4 days and the price is under £125 ex VAT. See HERE. MP2200s seem pretty thin on the ground.

[Mike Fishcake]

Thanks, that's more than I'd managed to find. Really don't want to have to replace both CPUs, but of course that's going to be a lot harder than anything else. Another option is to get some other sort of reasonably priced dual CPU system I suppose? HT won't be suitable, but Dual Core will. Still quite expensive though. The guy is using it to test Dual CPU support on various builds of the FreeBSD OS or something. It doesn't even have to be an incredibly powerful system either.

Thanks for having a look for me. If I get anywhere with this, I'll post a followup.

[nichomach]

TBH, replacing both Athlons is going to probably be cheaper than putting in a dual-core P4 setup, since you'd need a new motherboard, memory and probably graphics card as well; the supporting Intel chipsets are DDR2-only and as far as graphics are concerned, PCI-E.

[DavidM]

Although Dual core AMD base systems will be cheaper, the cpu's may be a bit more initially.

[Rave]

It's a shame this is for a work machine because it would be a piece of cake to L5 mod an XP2200 and use that.

[Mike Fishcake]

It's a shame this is for a work machine because it would be a piece of cake to L5 mod an XP2200 and use that.

tbh, that was my first idea. never done it before though.

[Rave]

I've done 2, both worked first time. What makes the L5 mod so easy is that you don't have to worry about covering up the pit between the bridges, since the substrate there is connected to one or other of the pins anyway. You just slop some conductive paint on there and you should be good to go.

I don't know if it works on 'superlocked' (I.E. post 0339) processors though. Both of the processors I modded were mid-0330s (like 0336 I think) so I had to scrape the varnish off the bridges before I modded them.

[Mike Fishcake]

Just ordered the 2 MP2800s off PCWB.

[nichomach]

I don't think you'll go far wrong there .

[Mike Fishcake]

I'll just be glad to get this system out of the way TBH. The mobo went faulty, so we got a replacement one of those, then we found that one of the CPUs was faulty. After mounting the mobo in the case, we found that the board was a lot bigger, and with there being 8 hard drives in the case (4x scsi, 4x ide), the bracket for holding 3 of the HDs was now over the RAM slots, so we'll either have to re-case the computer or put the SCSIs in an external box.

Fun, fun fun :-/

[nichomach]

Been there, done that - I'm on two Optis now after my Gigabyte GA-7DPXDW dual SoA board (running, as it happens, 2xMP2800s) went titsup.com. Got new board, 2xOpti 246's ; Coolermaster ATC201 case too small. Bought a Coolermaster Stacker, and that copes fine. BIG bugger though. Nice case to work in, lots of thumbscrews, though as seems to be the case with a lot of cases, the front USB/audio module is a waste of a good slot; why can't the industry standardise on internal USB connections as well as external ones, FFS?

[Mike Fishcake]

I've actually got to put together a quote for the guy that owns the above machine for an opteron based system (single CPU though). Not actually built an opteron system before though, so do you have any recommendations?

edit: should mention it's going in a 19" rack

[nichomach]

Well, I didn't have much option when I was putting my kit together - rush job. If it's single CPU, your client might want to wait for the single-socket dual core ones to come out. Don't skimp on the board; nForce Professional ought to be the way to go - good memory bandwidth and two full PCI-Ex16 lanes see HERE. The ASUS K8N-DL looks a good bet, and Scan have that for £178.49 ex VAT. If he doesn't want to wait, he might actually consider a couple of single core Optis, but that's something you might discuss with him. 246's are under £200 ex VAT each at the mo, and I can tell you they give a lot of bang for buck (or quid). DON'T skimp on memory - you need good quality Registered, ECC for preference.

edit: Just realised - 19" rack - is this going to be a server? If so the PCI-E stuff won't be relevant.

[Mike Fishcake]

Cheers for the info.. it is gonna be a server, yeah, he probably won't want to wait until dual cores come out, so i'd probably go for single.

As for the asus motherboard, I always try to go for asus all the time anyway, so i'm glad that's a board that others recommend.

Anyway, off home now. ta!

[Rave]

*cough* got some spare caps and a soldering iron waiting here Nicho....