Recent content by Divebrake

I have the PAL 8045 on my 8KHA+. I did have to file a bit off a corner of the 8045, but it wasn't difficult to do. The 8KHA+ does have crappy AC97 onboard sound. I bought a Sondblaster because I couldn't stand the awful quality of the AC97 sound.

Prime95 is great for exposing problems with RAM timings. I haven't tried CPU Burn, but Toast heats things up way better than SETI and really stresses the 5V rail on your PSU.

I lapped my 8045 a bit. It had big machining grooves on the base so I lapped just enough to get rid of them. Some people have lapped them longer so as to get a mirror-like shine, but I didn't want to remove too much copper, and I'm skeptical of the idea that a mirror shine is necessary. I'm...

I like the PAL 8045. The black pins remind me of that monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Looks like an ominous forest of those monoliths on your motherboard.

http://www.mpcparts.com/parts.asp?cat=cases Chieftec case here, exact same case as Antec SX1030, for $55

Cooler Master HHC-001 doesn't even require tools, just a thumb.

http://www.svcompucycle.com/ Arctic Silver 3 for $6.99, shipping free

I suppose I could have pushed the capacitor out of the way but I thought filing the heatsink would be more prudent. I guess slight variations in the way that capacitor is soldererd onto the board account for the fact that some people have to file and some don't. But like I said, this is not a...

Some people swear their 8045 was a perfect fit on their 8KHA+ but my 8045 definitely would have touched that capacitor if I hadn't filed it some. I used a $3.50 file from Ace hardware and it took about half an hour. You don't need expensive tools for this. Afterwards I gave it a hot water...

The Taisol CGK760092 copperbottom is supposed to work much better with a lo-flo fan than SK6. It's reasonably cheap too.

I had the SK6 and contemplated wacky schemes to put an 80mm fan on it, then I thought "hey, why not just buy a PAL 8045 and sell the stupid SK6?". So I did.

The $24 you save buying the retail version will buy you a Volcano 7, which is enormously superior to a stock OEM cooler. Forget the warranty. 3 years from now the XP 1800+ will a slow dinosaur that you can buy on Ebay for $15.

Robhancock, the guy who created the Dimension XPS-R processor upgrade page that eplebnista mentioned, is a daily visitor to the forum I mentioned in my first post. Real helpful nice guy.

If it's a Dimension XPSr series machine it can take any coppermine P3 up to 1Ghz. Go here: http://delltalk.us.dell.com/messages/overview.asp?page=1&name=dim_upgrade You'll find a lot of helpful and knowledgeable people who'll answer all your questions.

googlegear.com I did the P3 850 Mhz upgrade on my Dell last year, then realized it was stupid, sold the Cpu and the Dell on Ebay and built an AMD system instead. P3 is outdated, exhausted technology selling at a premium price. AMD is a wiser choice. Btw, I paid $176 for the p3 and sold it...