Cheap AMD motherboard CPU combo suggestion needed

[Hop]

Not happy with giving the kids my Athlon 1800+ XP and 2600+ XP hand-me-downs, and thought, since prices are fairly cheap, I'd redo their machines with the higher AMD CPU's available today. Since I have been all Intel awhile, I'm fairly clueless at what AMD has been doing the last 4 years.

What I came up with after reading a few reviews on NewEgg is something like AMD Athlon 64 3200+ or even 3000. The price is like $30-$40. I'm trying to keep the CPU/Motherboard price below $100 apiece. Existing PSU's are solid since I replaced all them last year. Drives, cases are all solid. Just thought that since prices are so cheap, might as well throw a little more punch in those machines.

So, any suggestions? Gotta keep the CPU/MB price below $100 apiece. Has to be able to support DDR2 184 pin since I have lots of that laying around after upgrading my son's and my machine to Abit C2D boards using the 240 pin ram.

Thanks for your time! I feel bad because I could research posts here for the next month, but I don't have a month, I have a few days to get those platforms upgraded to meet my Christmas deadline. =)

Hop

 

[Hop]

I found a combo deal on newegg.com for;
AMD Athlon 64 4000+ San Diego 2.4GHz 1MB L2 Cache Socket 939 Processor
Foxconn NF4K8MC-EKRS 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Micro ATX AMD

BUT! The motherboard is PCI-E, and I need an AGP motherboard so I can use video cards I have laying around. =(

So, I need a motherboard that can do AGP if I don't expect to have to buy two new video cards.

Hop

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: Hop
Has to be able to support DDR2 184 pin since I have lots of that laying around after upgrading my son's and my machine to Abit C2D boards using the 240 pin ram.

Don't you mean DDR instead of DDR2?

What are the existing AGP video cards?

What games do they play?

I would still suggest going socket AM2 and getting DDR2. You can probably sell your used DDR to recoup the costs of DDR2 since new DDR costs twice as much as new DDR2.

 

[o1die]

I knew of one source of agp 939 boards, but they've sold out. If you want agp, I would go with socket 754 instead. Those boards are available as open box (refurb) at places like newegg, mwave, or computer geeks. Agp 939 boards are so scarce that you'll end up paying too much on ebay for one. If you want 939, check for refurb boards with onboard pci-e video. If you sell your old agp card, then you can add a pci-e card later. I use an asrock dual sata II, the only 939 board with true agp and pci-e support. I bought 2 of them when they were still available.

 

[Hop]

Ok, thanks Zap and o1die! That's somethings to think about and will help me a lot this weekend. And I didn't know DDR2 was the newer memory (240 pin?). I must have seen it somewhere and just assumed.

I checked newegg for the socket 754, and came up with this deal here.. The combo deal bundles a AMD Sempron 64 3000+ Palermo 1.8GHz Socket 754 62W Processor Model SDA3000AIO2BX - OEM with it for $54.98. The board has an AGP port. I guess my question to that is, and remember, I'm real stale on AMD developments since the Athlon 2600+, would that combo give me noticeable improvement over my 1800+ and 2600+ machines?

Thanks again guys for the guick advice and direction!!!

Hop

 

[Peter]

The K8 architecture is a noticeable improvement over K7, even at the same low clock speeds - and that Biostar board should be a solid choice for AGP.

 

[heyheybooboo]

I don't see where you would gain all that much going from socket-A to Sempron 1.8GHz "754"

The XP 2600+ is still a decent proc. If you were looking to spend $200 I'd definately go with a AMD AM2 mobo/cpu combo.

MSI K9MM-V AM2 VIA K8M800 Micro ATX AGP Motherboard

and

AMD Athlon 64 LE-1620 2.4GHz 1MB L2 Cache Socket AM2 45W

For $12 more

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Windsor 2.0GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 65W Processor - OEM

Need a HS/fan. Drat!

I'm still kinda confused on your ram . . .do you have some DDR2?

 

[Hop]

Originally posted by: heyheybooboo
I don't see where you would gain all that much going from socket-A to Sempron 1.8GHz "754"

The XP 2600+ is still a decent proc. If you were looking to spend $200 I'd definately go with a AMD AM2 mobo/cpu combo.

MSI K9MM-V AM2 VIA K8M800 Micro ATX AGP Motherboard

and

AMD Athlon 64 LE-1620 2.4GHz 1MB L2 Cache Socket AM2 45W

For $12 more

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Windsor 2.0GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 65W Processor - OEM

Need a HS/fan. Drat!

I'm still kinda confused on your ram . . .do you have some DDR2?

Naw, I have DDR, 184 pin, not DDR2 240 pin.
The two that will use the new hardware don't play games, and marginal video and audio use. The ECS in one of the old machines has an issue where it loses its CMOS settings sometimes, even after replacing the cmos battery. The other machine is an old Gateway with RAMBUS (256mb) and a P4 1.4GHz Socket 423. It's scrap or worse. I'm pulling the 2600+ on a MSI nforce board out of my linux rig and plan to build around that for our 10 year old daughter.

So even if the gain is minimal, it's still newer, and a bit better, and only $55 apiece.

EDIT: I like those suggestions you gave, and I might go with that, but then I have to sell my memory, buy new memory. I'd rather use existing resources for now. Oh, did you see that combo deal with that last CPU you linked? I can't believe they combo'd that Rosewill RCX-Z5. I read about that HSF and it is junk. Looks pretty cool though, like those little bots that ran all over Obi Wan's ship in star wars III.

 

[heyheybooboo]

Here is a 64 X2 4000+ Brisbane 2.1GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 65W Processor retail box for $57 with promo code EMC1206CPU01

With that MSI mobo you would be good to go.

Too bad about the ram - maybe you could put together a single new rig and 'spuce' up the XP 2600+ with a tv tuner or such.

Or better yet check out Anand's *Merchandise and Shopping* and cut a deal

LOL @ good-looking junk coolers. I bet they sell a bunch of 'em

If that was 512- or 1gb rdram 800 I might cut a deal with yah . . . I've got a few old P3 workstation boards laying around that work nicely with that . . .

 

[Hop]

Originally posted by: heyheybooboo
Too bad about the ram - maybe you could put together a single new rig and 'spuce' up the XP 2600+ with a tv tuner or such.

That's what that 2600+ was, with a PVR-150, Linux (Ubuntu Feisty), and MythTV.
The P4 was my main, but now is my Linux, and the C2D I can't get to work yet is my main. Thank the good lord for laptops or I wouldn't be able to go online.

Oh man, my better half just informed me that our youngest wants a pink case. I guess now I have to learn how to paint mod cases too. hehehe. I'm sure I'll find some threads here on that.

Seriously, I went to Tom's Hardware and looked at some older CPU comparison charts, and was surprised to see how well those AMD processors do, and so inexpensive! I had no idea.

Hop

 

[VirtualLarry]

If you want a pink case, then this one is a solid choice. A friend of mine (a female) got a system built in that case.

 

[Denithor]

Solution to your troubles:

ASRock 4CoreDual-Sata2 $66
Celeron 420 $43

The motherboard has AGP & PCI-E (4x) slots as well as DDR (184-pin) and DDR2 (240-pin) memory sockets. That Celeron is basically 1/2 of the e2140 (Core 2 Solo, same C2D architecture but only one core) so you will already be familiar with the performance.

EDIT: And, by the way, what's wrong with your main C2D system? Maybe we can help talk you through your problems.

 

[Hop]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
If you want a pink case, then this one is a solid choice. A friend of mine (a female) got a system built in that case.

Yes, I've happened upon that case, and was pleased to see it was a raidmax. I have had raidmax cases before I found the antec 900. Only problem I had with the ones I had was the support bar above where the AGP card came out, and it interfered with my DVI connection.

I was told by Talya (the recipient of the case) that it didn't look pink enough. Maybe the newegg image doesn't do it justice and I'll search google images for more pics of it. I doubt I could make a case look any pinker without taking it to a auto-body shop.

 

[Hop]

Originally posted by: Denithor
Solution to your troubles:

ASRock 4CoreDual-Sata2 $66
Celeron 420 $43

The motherboard has AGP & PCI-E (4x) slots as well as DDR (184-pin) and DDR2 (240-pin) memory sockets. That Celeron is basically 1/2 of the e2140 (Core 2 Solo, same C2D architecture but only one core) so you will already be familiar with the performance.

Huh. I heard someone else in this thread talk about this board, but said they couldn't find it anymore so I wrote it off. That's definitely a solid alternative, thank you!

Originally posted by: Denithor
EDIT: And, by the way, what's wrong with your main C2D system? Maybe we can help talk you through your problems.

Thank you for that offer, I appreciate it. I have another thread I did about it here.

My problem is unique for sure, although the solution might be common. OK, sorry, what I mean is, I have two 320g drives set up as a raid 0, and I want to keep the second partition. During a slipstream process/install, I deleted the first partition, recreated it, formatted it, and installed Windows XP Pro on it. Everything went along just fine until the usual reboot, then I get this millisecond flash or hint of a blue screen before the machine reboots again, and again, and again. I suspect it is one of a few things or all of them.

1. 
   1: The drive letters changed, and the second primary partition is now lettered as C. The first partition I deleted, recreated, formatted, and installed on WAS C, but now it is D. One suggested that is screwing up my slipstreaming.
   
   2: I possibly have a setting wrong in the bios, because I didn't know why the option of AHCI or RAID. I get a line of text warning me that the AHCI bios is not loaded during the post messages.
   
   3: I have a bad board.
   
   4: I have some bad memory.

What I'm going after this afternoon is making sure I got everything setup right in the bios, and running some testing tools from a bootable CD to test the motherboard, memory, etc. Unfortunately, I can't get a hold of my MVP/Intel buddy so outside of memtest, I don't know what to use... yet. I want to eliminate all the common factors, and try to narrow the cause down to a manageable list. I wish my Corsair 2gb flash drive was here from newegg. I could make it bootable and that would save me additional CD burning. I have my e1505 laptop along side though, a full stack of rewrites available, so I have what I need to get it working. As long as the hardware is ok that is.

Temps are amazingly low via the Abit EQ tab in the bios, so I know I did good by the HSF and the AS5 I used, at least at this stage.

Reason for the slipstreaming is that I'm having issues using a floppy. I have three available; panasonic, teac, and nec, and I used each one. The floppy disks I used came out of a box of floppies I bought a year ago, stored in a gallon ziplock baggy. I know that floppies are more perishable than the strawberries fermenting in my fridge, so I may go out and buy another pack of them. I also used three different FDC cables.

Problem is, the drivers can't be read, then they can. During several install attempts, the ability to read the raid drivers off the floppy is hit and miss. I have never encountered this issue before. The only common factor is that box of disks, so right after I reply this to the topic, I'm heading out to get a new pack of them.

I also wanted to do the slipstreaming to eliminate my dependency on floppy disks. IMO, one of the worst oversights of Windows XP design for installing raid drivers. I even entertained the idea of building a floppy drive emulator using a micro controller on a breadboard. Too deep for such a simple need though. Vista fixes this problem, but no way do I want vista, at least not yet.

Sorry for the flood of info, but you asked, and every hard issue I have had has been solved by you golden gurus here. Believe me, I appreciate it!

I'll edit this or post another reply when I have more specific information from my MB's post.

THANK YOU for your time!

Hop

 

[Hop]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
If you want a pink case, then this one is a solid choice. A friend of mine (a female) got a system built in that case.

THANK YOU VirtualLarry! I pulled up an image or two off of Google images of that case, and showed it to Talya, and she was very happy how it looked. I also showed her a Saitek Pink Keyboard & Mouse Combo and she's tickled PINK! ehem, sorry. Only thing I have to do now is make sure her DVD drive is black, or something that has a face plate that is easily painted pink. Also, I wonder if there are high-output LED's that emit a 'pink' wavelength, not that I would know what that wavelength would be. I'd like to light up the interior with the pink lights, and maybe customize the side panel with a large plexiglass window. I LOVE doing stuff for the kids that make them go "WOW!".

I gotta say too that these case makers are missing the boat on colors, specifically female-friendly pink, etc. Since computing is now so omni-present, and machine appearance is more of a projection of the user's personality than ever before, it would be wise to consider both genders.

 

[Denithor]

Ok, addressing your problems with the Windows installation.

My first thought is bad memory, which I have personally seen cause exactly these kind of problems. I once tried to set up 2x160GB Seagate drives in a Raid0 for a buddy and couldn't get it right. I eventually just tried setting up Windows on a single drive to see if maybe the raid controller on the mobo was bad. The Win installation ended up corrupt and nothing would work correctly. That's when I figured out it was a bad memory stick (which memtest86 confirmed). Pulled that stick, redid the raid thing, everything went totally smooth after that.

Do you have a spare hard drive that you can try doing just a basic (non-raid) Win install onto? If everything goes smooth this is probably a software issue of some kind.

My problem is unique for sure, although the solution might be common. OK, sorry, what I mean is, I have two 320g drives set up as a raid 0, and I want to keep the second partition. During a slipstream process/install, I deleted the first partition, recreated it, formatted it, and installed Windows XP Pro on it.

What partition are you talking about here? When raid0 is set up you normally have one partition that spans both drives. If you can confirm that your hardware is good, try to recreate the raid array from scratch (delete the partition/array and set it back up fresh).

 

[Hop]

Originally posted by: Denithor
What partition are you talking about here? When raid0 is set up you normally have one partition that spans both drives. If you can confirm that your hardware is good, try to recreate the raid array from scratch (delete the partition/array and set it back up fresh).

The raid volume was recognized by the controller, and when I pressed control + i, I got into the configuration utility for the controller. It listed my raid volume, something (sorry, don't have it in front of me yet, but will soon) about it being ok, and that it was bootable. When windows on my slipstream can see the drives, or the array for that matter, it showed the partitions on that array as they were before I moved them from my old XP install.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but partitioning isn't drive specific for a raid 0 array. The raid array is basically all one drive, with two paths for I/O via the hardware. The partitions are supposed to be as if it was a single drive, right? At least that is the way it seemed on my previous install. And you aren't limited to one partition, but instead limited to 4 primary partitions as if you would with one drive on a Windows XP file system. I didn't think about it until this moment, but 4 primary partitions isn't specific to fat32 or NTFS. Right?

Yes, I do have a selection of drives I can use to test a "test" install of windows to test the hardware. I guess raid isn't important to see if I have other issues needing diagnosing. thanks for suggesting that, as I would have overlooked that.

Hop

 

[Hop]

One thing I noted after reading a ton of threads is that my memory was set to the wrong voltage. The voltage for sure, not sure about the timings, and my memory is 4-4-4-12 and 2.2v. I went into the bios and adjusted the voltage and the timings, saved, and restarted. No problems. I am running memtest86+ right now.

I'm going to go past this stage, and try to install without slipstreaming, pressing F6 to install the raid drivers. I made 6 diskettes, 3 intel raid drivers, and 3 jmicron raid drivers. I still don't know why I have that option on the bootable Abit CD. The only weird anomaly was the first diskette needed to be quick formatted. ??? It's a fresh box of diskettes.

Live and learn about the memory I guess. I never had to manually enter settings before. This is my first time with higher-end hardware though.

 

[Hop]

OK!

It seems that the voltage and settings I had my memory set to were the problem. I set them to what they are suppose to be, and tried a reinstall WITHOUT slipstreaming, and it worked just fine! Even the floppy worked for the raid drivers.

Problem now is that the drive letters are wrong, and the partition order seems to have changed. Not sure how that can be possible, since partitions are supposed to be ordered based on their location physically. Anyway, I'm into Windows, and ready to install my burning software so I can get all that stuff off my other partition, wipe and reinstall the way it is suppose to be.

And after 100 passes with memtest80+ test #5, no errors, so it looks like my hardware is doing just fine. FINALLY!

I know this is a little side-road off of my initial topic about a cheap AMD motherboard and processor. I DID get all I needed from this thread, even extra help on my C2D! Thanks guys!!!

Hop