Emachines, Celerons and Firewires

[Swafe]

Originally posted by Austin
A friend of my wife's forked out big bucks for a P4 1.6ghz (PC World IIRC) when they first came out. Guess what? It had SDR PC133 and yes it sucked awfully (slower than a PIII 1ghz). I can't remember what gfx it had, most likely onboard or TNT2, GF2MX if she was lucky. Did she ask me what was good to buy ... or if I'd build it for her? NO. Her loss. Want to know why she went P4? Because the salesman had an AMD T-shirt on she wouldn't believe him when he said Athlons were much better and much cheaper.

ouch - my mate did this, but he fooled even more, into RDram !

he paid 700 quid for a base unit - no monitor (this was a few months after launch and a 1.4gig athlon would have cost him LOADS less) he got

p4 1.3 400mhz bus (423 socket, pretty much obsolete as he bought it)
128rd ram - absolute rubbish
on board 32 meg gfx - complete papness - so he only had 96mb for windows

its as slow as a dead donkey - my 1.5gig soc 370 celeron owns it

and this is a celeron the early p4s only had 256k l2 cache as well, oh and a 5400rpm hdd to just to take the mick

he could have had twice that if he went for a home built amd

[Galant]

Many thanks guys!

[evildoc614]

Galant.. do you go to school in tucson? just wondering am from az... an way e machines are crap... they have 2 pci slots 1 agp slot and use crap ram and other crap componets... if this computer is going to be used for word and thats it i would say maybe it would be ok but if you plan on playing even ONE game stay away from it.. if you search around for deals you can get away better deal. dont sacrafice now and suffer later. spend a little extra and you will be happy. you get what you pay for though

[Galant]

on, I graduated from uni before I came over form England. I just live and work here.

Thanks!

[dgr]

only problem with homebuilt... you can go way overbudget .

£2000 +!

[evildoc614]

i cant believe you went from england to tucson... big change. depending on what kinda system you want and how much you plan on spending you could get a great deal, you would save alot by building it. just dont settle for emachines

[Galant]

Well, it looks like I'm going to throw together an Athlon 2500+, Volcano 9 heatsink fan, 512MB PC3200 DDR SDRAM, MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR/Abit mobo (check out other post 'War of the Mobos'), Radeon 9600 Pro, Antec case, WD 80 Gig SE Hdrive (7200 Rpm, 8MB cache), Keyboard, mouse etc, monitor, etc. for about $800 (approx. 472 sterling). Did that from memory so may have missed something. Depending on the motherboard and the gfx card it will either be up to $25 below 800 or perhaps just above.

Definite big change moving here, lots of pluses and some minuses.

[Austin]

That will be an ace system, even if you never o/c it. Of course if you do o/c it you can expect big gains since the CPU should hit XP3200+ while the gfx should exceed Rad9600XT speeds. Rem 2x256MB=512MB will give a good little boost over 1x512MB on Dual Channel mobos like those based on the nForce2 Ultra400. I'd rec the Volcano11 (£15) over the 9. The 9 is very good but 11 is that bit better and will allow you to runt he fan that bit slower (ie quieter).

[Galant]

I hope so. Never put one together but from what I can tell it shouldn't be too tricky. Anyone know anything about using thermal paste for the fan? Is that the advised way to go or is it unecessary?

As for OCing, I no nothing about it beyond the principle. I've heard some negative press about it, so assume there's risks. Does it reduce the life of the processor? Is it tricky to do?

[Austin]

The thinnest possible core size layer of thermal paste is often used between the CPU's core and the HS, the idea being to remove any tiny pockets of air.

O/c'ing won't be necessary as your PC will perform admirably without and you want to ensure your build is rock solid at defaults before you push it. In the old days o/c'ing was for enthusiasts only and the risks were big while the rewards were small. Things have changed now though.

Putting it simply a company want to produce a range of products suited ot all budgets with perf to match the price. However instead of a company producing several parts which are totally different they simply produce a product and then lower it's potential speed in order to satisfy the diff demands present in the market. For example AMD produce the TbredB, almost always capable of around 2.2ghz (XP2800+) but they sell them set to many speeds and many clocked as low as 1.47ghz (XP1700+) in order to fill demand rather than have to produce a CPU designed to run at the particular speed in question. So it's very easy for a careful user to gradually increase the speed and find out what the part is actually capable of. Other examples are (on average) XP2500+ easily yielding XP3200+ speed, Rad9700 yielding Rad9800PRO speeds, GF4TI4200 yielding 4600 speeds and the list goes on. All you have to do is pick your parts carefully.

That's basically all there is to it. So long as you ensure you're stable at default speeds (so you know it's athe o/c that's causing instability) you simply raise the speed(s) a little at a time and see where you can get to. There's a bit more to it than that but not much. So long as you go steadily and test throughly you're truly stable risks are virtually nill. You are simply running the part where it is capable of running not what the manufacturer wants you to run it, so long as you are carefull you will not age the part (as such) at all. You also have the added bonus that you generally buy the cheaper parts (as they're the ones clocked below their capabilities) so IF you need to replace it (which is very unlikely) it costs very little anyway!

[Galant]

Would you say paste is necessary/advised, or not?

I suppose I can find a guide online if I do decide I want to OC.

[evildoc614]

i would say you need thermal paste... at first temps will be a few degrees higher but after about 200 hours of use the paste does somthing.. and temps will drop.. i wouldnt go with out it.

[Austin]

I would certainly use paste but a lot of people put too much on which is worse than none at all. I think that's one reason why AMD did a bit of a U-turn on the matter. If you aren't going to be reinstalling the HSF then the std gunk which ships with most HSF should be more than adequate (although techie's will always like top stuff like Arctic Silver or CM).

[Ravens Nest]

Yeah i put too much on when i installed my XP 2200+ i now have a black burnt mark all around the core.

What i do now is put a small amount on the core (the size of small pea) and then spread it with a credit card until it makes a white rectangle that covers the core evenly.

Make another small pea of thermal paste on the HSF and get a plastic bag turn it inside out over my hand and rub the thermal paste into the bottom of the heat sink until it's all spread across it evenly.

then stick them together being careful not to smear the compound and thats it.

What do you think austin? any advice for me and galant?

[Austin]

You covered it Ravens Nest! I don't use the bag myself but it certainly seems like a good tip.

[Ravens Nest]

Originally posted by Austin
You covered it Ravens Nest! I don't use the bag myself but it certainly seems like a good tip.

thanks austin, the use of a bag is a good tip i found (Forgotten where ) it stops you putting grease and dirt off your fingers on to the heatsink and rubbing it in makes sure any imperfections in the heatsink are filled in with thermal compound.