New PC
 

It is time to buy a new PC. The old 1.6 GHz Northwood has served me well. It's new job will be replacing my wife's underpowered desktop.

Here is the proposed machine: [url]http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/WishList/WishDetail.asp?position=HISTORY&ID=1659355&WishListTitle=New+PC[/url]

Comments / ideas for improvement are welcome.

I'm hoping to overclock the 820 somewhat. These chips run very hot, so I'm not expecting too much. I've run the old 1.6 GHz at 2.16 GHz for 3-4 years without trouble.

I'm a little up in the air on memory. Should I spend $100 more for CAS4 memory? Should I save money and get CAS3 DDR2-667?

The case and power supply are more than I expected. I want good air flow. The case has 120mm fan input and 80mm fan on back and top. The power supply has a 120mm fan and is very efficient.

The video card is cheap - I don't play games. Maybe I can even underclock it for less heat :)

The 2 disks are for a mirror raid -- gotta keep that Mersenne database safe!

I sure hope win64 has drivers for all this stuff.

[QUOTE]I'm hoping to overclock the 820 somewhat. These chips run very hot, so I'm not expecting too much. I've run the old 1.6 GHz at 2.16 GHz for 3-4 years without trouble.[/QUOTE]

Have you considered a water cooled sytem?

I have gone off the idea of over-clocking since I had to remove the square P4 motherboard power connector with a pair of plyers after it had welded itself to the motherboard due to overvoltage at a guess. Luckily I cleaned off the carbon to expose some copper and put it back its now unique socket and hey presto. it worked again. :surprised

George,
Can't access your newegg page above as it requires a log in. Care to list the components individually?

[QUOTE=paulunderwood]Have you considered a water cooled sytem?[/QUOTE]

Yes, but they worry me a little bit (leaks, pump failures, etc.) Then I learned about heatpipe technology. It is almost as good as water cooling and with 120mm fans runs pretty quiet too.

As to melting parts, I'm a coward and only bump the voltage up one or two notches. I've been browsing for info at [url]http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/[/url] (these guys are overclocking nuts!)

George if you were looking at Intel 820 may I suggest you seriously consider 830 instead as it is not a lot more money. Also 830 has some extra features like the speedstep technology and it works in Nforce4(Intel) motherboards whereas 820 doesn't.

840/840EE are quite a jump in price above 820/830 not justified by the incremental performance IMO. Also 8xx generally run HOT so you are right to consider cooling.

A proper hardware raid controller would be better than software raid or so-called "fake raid" (google it) which still puts burden on the processor and is slow.

I understand why you would benefit from having dualcore machine to develop on, but also consider the AMD X2 for this purpose or even opteron dualcores.

If you can wait six months there are exciting new products from both Intel and AMD coming either Q4 or Q1 onwards. eg Yonah dualcore products.

Consider changes like eg AMD are migrating next year to new sockets across all their ranges. AMD are also supporting DDR2 across the board. eg the successor to Turion, codename "Taylor".

If you can wait about a year there are even more new products from Intel (next gen architecture shorter pipeline, better FP) and AMD too.

Maybe this is a perpetual problem in the computer industry but the changes seem quite big, or revolutionary. eg I am thinking will the new socket types be available as adapters for any cooling solutions I buy today?

If you must buy now, I suggest PCI-E slot and DDR2 are definitely things to go with, possibly quite fast DDR2, but inevitably this will reduce in price next year with volumes. Maybe get minimum RAM then put more in when it gets cheaper next year.

As you say GPU performance is unimportant, had you considered integrated graphics like the 945G chipset from Intel which does support 820, 830?

Aaaaacccckkkk!

All the parts are here --- except the power supply.

Go all out and get a VAPOCHILL!!!! that should take care of your heat problems and give you a decent overclock!!!! :showoff:

[QUOTE=georgekh]Go all out and get a VAPOCHILL!!!! that should take care of your heat problems and give you a decent overclock!!!! :showoff:[/QUOTE]

Or better : take a frigo computer, you'll have the beer as a bonus !
(pure french technology !)

I wouldn't risk putting any liquid cooling into the system that has the mersenne database. Better to get a good heatsink like the Thermalright XP90C with 92mm fan. As for the case, I recommend the Thermaltake Tsunami Dream. It comes with 2 120mm fans and a dust filter. This should ensure reliability, as the fans won't get clogged up with dust gremlins.

How long can you wait till your purchase? I hear that 65 nm cores will come out in mid-November. You'll see dual cores up to 3.6GHz, and if you still go with the 2.8GHz or 3.0GHz ones, they'll run much cooler.

... thermaltake xaser 3 very good case replace the fans with the powerful cooling fan from areo cool
[url]http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-detailsInactive.asp?Sku=Q131-3101[/url]
its out of stock right now and is loud but it runs....

For cooling, Vapochill MICRO (choose 775 extreme performance version) big and light heatpipe (vapourising refrigerant sealed inside) cooling with 92mm fan good performance without spillable water.

Also checking out Intel's plans.....

The "Presler" series dualcores will be out Q1 as models 920,930,940,950 etc

These will support virtualisation and are dualcore and 64 bit.

There will also be a Extreme Edition high 9xx that additionally does hyperthreading but too expensive.

9xx chips will work in exisitng 775 sockets based on 955X chipset (probably 945 too). They have 2MB L2 cache EACH CORE = 4MB total. Also the chip is made on new 65nm process which means it OUGHT to run a little cooler than 8xx.

Additionally I also read that next CHIPSET will be called 975X and will also be out Q1 (previously Q2). Aside from being great I have ALSO read that it supports CONROE the even more next gen processor architecture coming out later in 2006.

So if buying Intel mobo today get 955X if waiting get 975X based mobo. Intel plan the new 975X chipset to cost the same as the current 955X chipset does now.

Also 975X chipset is believed it will have two x16 PCI slots and probably get supported by both Nvidia and ATI for their dual graphics card solutions like SLI.

Wouldn't want you to buy something then kick yourself, George.

[QUOTE=Peter Nelson]Wouldn't want you to buy something then kick yourself, George.[/QUOTE]

He is replacing a 1.6 Northwood. I tend to suspect he'll need to kick himself in twenty oh nine. :) :) :)

Aaaaccckkk - Microsoft x64 Windows :rant: :rant: :rant:

So I put the system together, configure Intel Matrix Raid, fire up Windows setup and it says: "Aborting, you don't have any disk drives." Silly me, I thought x64 Windows might have driver support for third tier chipset companies --- LIKE INTEL :shock: :shock:

OK, so I find some drivers on the ASUS CD Rom, fire up Windows Setup, hit F6 saying I've got some drivers, and it says: "Aborting, you don't have a floppy drive." Well, of course not, I haven't used a floppy in 3 years. That 1980 technology has no business being in my computer! You'd think MS could update their 1990 era setup program to find drivers on the Internet or CD-ROM. :censored: :censored: :censored:

LOL but completely sympathetic. This is an example of why every one of my PCs has a floppy drive. I might only use it only once every 3 years but $10 - $12 for a floppy drive is cheap aggravation insurance when it comes to dealing with Microsoft software.

So far so good. Overclocking 25% is torture testing now. Overclocking 30% fails the torture test. This is without increasing voltages (and Vcore is drooping to 1.25V running dual prime).

25% overclock is 3.5GHz per CPU. 7GHz total - yum. Should be much better than the previous measly 2.133 GHz.

Temps are between 56C and 62C with the side panel open (so the floppy drive can hang out the side).

Now it just a balancing act between rock-solid stability / vcore / temps. I'll likely run the FSB at 10MHz below its maximum as determined by torture testing. With a 14x multiplier that is 140MHz below maximum CPU speed.

George, what was it you actually bought eventually? 955x board with an 820 proc?

Anyway sorry to hear of your sata trouble.

Of course Suse 9.3 has support for that chipset and the raiding already in there AFAIK lol.

I'm sure one day you will see the light and move to 64 bit Linux.

Once you get your windows sorted go for dual booting on your new machine which would be a step in the right direction.

Then one day you might grace us with a 64 bit Linux client :banana:

Regards,
Peter

I finally selected 3.5 GHz with a 0.0375 volt CPU core voltage bump. This was dual prime torture test stable at 3.6 GHz. Unfortunately, temps occasionally approached 70C with the case closed.

Today, I put 2 80mm fans in 2 5-1/4" drive bays. Motherboard temps dropped 12C and CPU temps 8C. All is good, 3.5GHz, stable, reasonable temps. :banana: :banana:

Well done George.

I am slightly jealous of your dual 64-bit Intel :wink:

Today I carefully fitted a "Gigabyte 3D Galaxy" water cooling system to a 3.4GHz P4 which I have never been able to cool properly from day 1 -- during the hottest part of the summer I had a case fan taped onto the standard heatsink fan, plus a room fan pointing at the open case.

On booting the water cooled system, I looked in bios and the temperature was 23C. I then fiddled with the hidden motherboard feature accessable through "ctrl+F1" and finally settled on the "racing" setting which I'd say was about 3.75GHz -- about 10% speed up on the standard settings. LLR is doing 2.9 msec/iteration at 2.1 million bits :w00t:

I hope I don't get a leak :whistle:

[QUOTE=paulunderwood]I am slightly jealous of your dual 64-bit Intel :wink:[/QUOTE]

I'm very pleased too. This is my third overclocked machine. The previous two times I did not get anywhere close to the results others were getting on the overclocking forums.

Of course, no one posts their crappy overclocking results. So maybe I was getting average results before and I got well above average results this time.

Third times a charm they uasally say....

Intel 8xx are made on 90nm process.

For Q1 they migrate to the new 65nm process to make 9xx which will be similar but have also virtualisation.

The process difference should shrink power consumption and heat.

I saw some figures that watts for cpu drop to about 2/3 of the previous levels.

So someone overclocking their 9xx in Q1 should not have so much difficulty with the heat issues.

:furious: