Any PC Advice?

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AlphaBox

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Jul 30, 2003
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Well, this is my first post in this forum and im glad to find a place like this dedicated to pc enthusiasts. Though i'm only 14, i am now making the transition from average pc user to a modding freak and i have taken upon myself the challenge of putting together a new pc with new and salvaged parts. This is due to my recent realization of how buying a ready-made pc can be a terrible waste, as i am now discovering some pretty bad facts about my HP pavillion 734n in the field of expansionability. My current pc specs are:
AMD Athlon XP 2400+
512mb DDR 2100 ram
80gig 5400 rpm hard drive
64 mb Geforce 4 MX 420
and a CD-RW and DVDROM.
Those are generally the parts i plan to salvage, as my real problem is the motherboard, FIC AM37. Well, for starters ive already bought an Antec plusview1000AMG and a new Smartblue 350W psu. I am still saving for a new mobo, but any advice on transfering the CPU, mobo selection, and heatsink/fan selection would be greatly appreciated. Ive also been asking myself whether i should get some branded 2700ddr ram as i am not sure if my current ram is good quality. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks.
 
if you are not going to overclock pc2700 memory will absolutly be of NO help for your current system...

For transfering...buy some thermal grease (artic silver III) as the current compound cannot be transfered...make sure you clean of the old "junk" off the cpu/heatsink with a damp rag...

Also if you are running windows xp don't freak out if after you transefer everything that windows hangs on startup...you will need to reinstall windows most of the time after you switch mobos...it is an anti piration feature built into windows xp....

What i would like to know is....why are you switching mobos? i mean obviously the current one is of poor quality but it runs...you are going to get only a tiny performance increase at best by upgrading your mobo...

3 386DX-25's...12 volts...glue and some ln2 and a wicked amount of overclocking and you get a willamantee minus 36 pins, 33.75 million transistors and a couple hundred mhz... 😎
 
Well really the reason im changing the mobo is because of its lack of expandability. Like, one day i hope to get better forms of ram to go with new procs and really this mobo can only take 2100ddr, also, there are only 3 pci slots and the AGP is 4x only. Truth is, the idea of changing the stuff came when i thought about getting a high-end vid card. But i then realized the damn psu the pc came with was below 300W(which is the recommended amount for most high end cards today). So then i figured that if getting a vid card would mean getting a new psu, and the fact that HP psu slots are not big enough for standard atx psu's i figured i would have to buy a new case. And while im at it, why not just get a brand new, quality and up-to-date mobo to take full advantage of the new card, allow for future expansion and making the whole transfering process a one time thing to avoid damaging anything if i did it twice when i eventually do get a new mobo?

hmm, i did not know if this win XP tendency...how the hell do i reinstall it if the pc didnt come with an installation disc...unless i should make system recovery discs and use those or something?
(what would u say is the best heatsink/fan i could get for XP 2400 procs and above?)
 
it is illegal for the manufacturer not to include the installation disks for all of the software that the computer comes with...

That being said...how will pc2700 help a 266mhz fsb cpu...agp 8x does not do much for current games...i would upgrade when you have to...that way everything will be cheeper...but that is just me

I would recomend an epox 8rda+ good cheep board all the expandability you need with 6 pci slots and an 8x agp...good for overclocking if you ever take that route...but honestly i do not see the need....

3 386DX-25's...12 volts...glue and some ln2 and a wicked amount of overclocking and you get a willamantee minus 36 pins, 33.75 million transistors and a couple hundred mhz... 😎
 
How about selling the box and taking the proceeds to add to a new one? Would that get you a new system?

I think both PIII-Man and I have gone the upgrade route (maybe more than once) LOL. After you upgrade you'll find that you have have some spare parts left over and will want to build another system (waste not want not), which you might sell but if you keep the stuff around too long it will be pretty worthless. For me I have a friend or two with kids who can use the stuff I don't want to look at anymore and they're happy.

Like right now I have a 700 Celeron laying around and well maybe I'll just keep it as a spare for my 1400 if it ever burns out or maybe I could go the used junk store and see if I can get a MOBO...Still have the stick of 128MB PC100 that I paid $256(Cdn)+16%tax for a few years back.

The loving are the daring!
 
you have a celeron 1400? Any overclocking experience with that...just wondering because i am about to upgrade my pIII 700 to something with a little more umph...

3 386DX-25's...12 volts...glue and some ln2 and a wicked amount of overclocking and you get a willamantee minus 36 pins, 33.75 million transistors and a couple hundred mhz... 😎
 
oh and about things lying around...i totally agree...either sell all the stuff you don't use or give it to a freind...cause by the time you relise you will never use it, you find out it is probably worth one tenth if what you have payed for it....i wunder what i could sell my pentium 100 for...how bout my 386?

Unless you are like me and wana have that old stuff lying around just for the memories...i cant wait to find an atx to at adapter so i can run my old stuff...

But i still stand by the comment that you dont need to upgrade your board...

3 386DX-25's...12 volts...glue and some ln2 and a wicked amount of overclocking and you get a willamantee minus 36 pins, 33.75 million transistors and a couple hundred mhz... 😎
 
No, no experience overclocking at all :frown: .

I'm happy with the speed though I wouldn't mind upgrading the graphics card (LOL). Course then I could the old one t with the 700 Celeron and the leftover 128MB of PC100.
Lets see.. Mobo,case (Well I could use a better case),mouse, keyboard (I can go to the flea market and get high quality cheap stuff there). CRDW..yea I could get a new one for $20 and get rid of that Quad speed CDRom, and a floppy drive. Maybe one of my friends has a 2GB or 4GB disk he'd like to sell for $5 or $10. Would make a nice little system for a young kid?

What do you think?
----------------------------------
BTW let me know how that OC experience works out ok?

The loving are the daring!<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Flinx on 07/29/03 08:00 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
 
actually i was gonna go with the 1.1ghz celery as they overclock beter because of their lower multi...i will upgrade whenever i get a email confiirmation back from ugradeware that their slot T adapter will work in my board (mine does not have Tualatin support)...also i think i will splurge and get a 9500 non pro and mod it to 9700...

You are replacing the quad speed! I still have my toshiba scsi (i beleive it is toshiba its pretty old so i'm not sure) quad speed cdrom drive running on my k6 machine along with a newer tdk cdrw drive...

Does your quad speed use those funky disk caddies?

sounds like a killer system!

Wimp...i order you to overclock!

3 386DX-25's...12 volts...glue and some ln2 and a wicked amount of overclocking and you get a willamantee minus 36 pins, 33.75 million transistors and a couple hundred mhz... 😎
 
Yep the 1.1Ghz, got the same lecture from Crashman. Apparently the 100Mhz FSB is what slows things down and getting the 1.1 up to 1.4+ with 133FSB is ideal.

Hard to find parts for the old stuff now and not really worth it. Can't fault you with your hobby though.

I'm very happy with the SisSoft Sandra benchies/comparisons. Actually they are much better than I thought they'd be.

The loving are the daring!
 
Ok then, im gonna have to find out from Hewlett Packard why my pc came with no form of OS installation disc. All i can see related to win XP installation on my PC is a sticker on the side with the xp installation code, and a "create recovery discs" option in my start menu. Along with that, there is also an app recovery prog that allows me to restore stuff that came with the pc that got deleted or uninstalled... thanks for the epox recommendation, ill look into it.
 
I agree with pIII. Stick your money in a jar and get a new mobo when you get a new cpu. You'll get more bang for your buck and the possibility of getting a 433fsb board for further upgradability. OR come cpu upgrade time you might go with intel, who knows. Save your money, mobo upgrades always go better when you upgrade your cpu and memory with it.
 
...good point, ok maybe i'll slow down on my upgrade rush. A friend of mine did say i should wait till the end of the year and see how much further the cpu prices drop, beginning of last year the xp 2000 proc did cost about 300, and its now barely 50. dunno about switching to intel though, their cpus are way more expensive. But really, i had the idea that getting the mobo now and waiting for the xp 3200 to go really cheap while i still run a 2400 would be a better idea, dont think i'd want an athlon 64 until 64 bit apps really become popular. thanks for the advice though, i guess i'll save and wait.
 
Price cuts on intel and amd are expected in october and semptember respectively. But like I said, you want to upgrade one, your best bet is to upgrade all of them.
 
"Also if you are running windows xp don't freak out if after you transefer everything that windows hangs on startup...you will need to reinstall windows most of the time after you switch mobos...it is an anti piration feature built into windows xp...."

its got nothing to do with anti-PIRACY. its just that windows has a hard time when you change mobos, chipsets specificaly

wpdclan.com cs game server - 69.12.5.119:27015
 
not at all...it most definatly is anti piracy...you can look for a link...i did a mobo change from an se440bx to a 6abx2v in windows xp....she would not boot...on the exact same system only with windows 2k installed...it booted without incident...these boards have the exact same chipset...it most definitly IS an anti piracy feature that i do remember reading an article about...

3 386DX-25's...12 volts...glue some ln2 and a wicked amount of overclocking and you get a willamantee minus 36 pins, 33.75 million transistors and a couple hundred mhz... 😎
 
what your thinking of is the thing where you can only change a certain ammount of hardware before reactivating it. as far as i know there is nothing that will prevent it from booting.

wpdclan.com cs game server - 69.12.5.119:27015
 
now that i think of it we may both be right...i did a bit of research and M$ said it must be reactivated in 3 days...but all of the boards i was using had their bioses set to jan 1st 2000 (they had just been reset)...so possibly the software thought that i was trying to get by there software reactivation...i dunno...but i do know that win xp would not boot but win 2k would...

3 386DX-25's...12 volts...glue some ln2 and a wicked amount of overclocking and you get a willamantee minus 36 pins, 33.75 million transistors and a couple hundred mhz... 😎
 
just trust me it had nothing to do with drivers...if you take a pII windows 2000 hard drive and you put it on a p4 it WILL boot windows...the hardware will be detected and the software will be installed... both boards had the exact same chipset thus they should use the exact same drivers...the only diffrence btween the 2 boards was 1 had intigrted sound and the other didnt...but i was upgrading to the board without sound...so the soundcard would have not been detected and thus disabled...

If you do not beleive me....i will put my current hard drive on a 440TX based board and a 440lx based board...becuse i see alot of people blamming the os for not supporting drivers blabla...but really it is microsofts anti piration crap...

3 386DX-25's...12 volts...glue some ln2 and a wicked amount of overclocking and you get a willamantee minus 36 pins, 33.75 million transistors and a couple hundred mhz... 😎
 
i have had first hand expierience with windows 2000 switching over to different mother boards. at work i have about 4 different workstation builds, all very similar, intel chipsets. i dont have exact numbers but i have to have separate images for all of them. one will not boot on the other 3, it just says something about controler not found or somthing, i dont remember exactly

wpdclan.com cs game server - 69.12.5.119:27015
 
well i guess i have just ben lucky then :smile:

3 386DX-25's...12 volts...glue some ln2 and a wicked amount of overclocking and you get a willamantee minus 36 pins, 33.75 million transistors and a couple hundred mhz... 😎
 
I own your board, I told you my adapter worked on it fine.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>
 
Your computer came with the recovery CD...ON THE HARD DRIVE! Doh! It has a separate partition on the hard drive for it. The reason they did this? So that when your drive failed, you'd look at the price of an OS, and buy an entire computer instead. They sell a lot of computers that way I hear.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>
 
Actually no, it sometimes fails to boot. I put a new board in my PC, and XP configured it. After doing some testing, I put the old board back in, and XP refused to boot. I did a "repair install" and it worked again.

Both boards used the same chipset, it was simply a matter of the cards getting moved around to different IRQ's, etc.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>
 
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