Originally posted by: nagibbs
See below;
I am moving toward the time to upgrade my current system to a P4 but what to make sure that I know all that is involved. Current system is the following;
Inwin Q500 Full tower case
Abit BH6 MB (Version 1.2)
Intel P3 1000mhz (100mhz) bus
New Enermax 350W PS
Asus V8420 TI4200 128MB video
3 Hard drives
1 CDRW
I would like to go for a P4 2.4GHZ or higher and at least 256 ram. My questions are the following;
Will a P4 MB fit ok in this case?
What motherboard is recommended?
What Ram to use?
Where is a good place to look for the processor?
Anything else that I would have to change.
Thanks for the input but still have several more questions. I have narrowed it down to the Abit IC7 or IS7 and will be getting the Intel P4 2.4C processor. The video card will be an ASUS V8420 TI4200 amd I will be using my old Hard drives, a 40gb, 100gb and a 26gb. I will not be overclocking so which motherboard and what type of Ram would be my best value. Also, can someone give me a price that I can expect to get (say here in the For Sale/Trade section) for my current Abit BH6 (1.2) and P3 1000MHZ (100fsb) fcpga processor. Thanks
r.gibbs@insightbb.com
GOOD FER YOU MAN. I am a fellow ABIT BH6 man my self. And I'm not like a lot of the guys in the ATF here who puts together a new rig like every year. My BH6 'puter lasted me a full 4 1/2 years before I said it was time to upgrade. And in that rig the only real things I upgraded was to go from a cellry 300a to a P3 750, more ram and a more HD space. I really wanted to get a Athlon XP rig back in march time-frame, and then I heard that Intel would be releasing the 875/865 chipset and new P4c line of CPU's and I new for once it would really pay off to wait; and boy I was right.
Well to answer your question;
-You case is OK, as long as it's ATX
-Power supply: seems like you will need to buy a new one, as the PS for the ABIT BH6 board was designed before the P4 and does not have the P4 4-pin power connector. My recommendation is to get yourself a nice Antec True Power 430 W PS. They are super quiet. If you have any intention of overclocking you may want to get something a bit beefier. But 430W will last you a while.
-Your HD's :are fine, but may be lacking in space in a few months. You may want to get a new 120G-200G ATA100 Drive w/8MB cache and use it as your primary drive with your OS on it. Then use your older drives for backup drives. Also these drives I'm assuming are older and are nearing the end of their lifespan, so you don't want one of these drives to go belly up on you with XP on it. Get a WD Special Ed drive (just like I have, of course
as they come with a 3 year warranty. Most drives nowadays come with only a 1 year warranty. Believe me, the extra two years is worth it. (I just had to replace a Maxtor 60GIG HD I got back in Jun 02 and I got back a 80Gig drive, and I would of been out of luck if I had gotten only a 1 year warranty drive.)
-Your Video seems OK. As long as its 4X/8X compatible your OK. If you do any gaming then you definitely want to upgrade. When I upgraded I got a Radeon 9700 Non-pro, as it was the same price as the Radeon 9500 Pro but double the pipelines. I would still recommend to get this card if you want to upgrade. But if your not gaming stick with what you got, though you should think about upgrading in a while.
-For RAM: I'm Happy with Kingston HyperX PC3500. If you are 100% sure that you have no intentions of overclocking then just get some PC3200. I got 2X 512MB modules for a full gig. I could of gotten just 512MB total, but I'm sure in a year or so I would of wished I had gotten the full gig now. Don't be bought in buy the Corsair crowd. Yes it is the premium RAM out there, but you pay a VERY premium price for it, and its really only warranted if your OCing. You would pay about $25-30 over HyperX for each stick of Corsair. HyperX is high end as well, but without the high end price tag. (Of course I'm lucky that, I bought my ram before it went up $30 a stick.) Some say that the Kingston isn't compatible with 865/875 boards out there, but this isn't really true. I have called Kingston before and they say it works fine, but if you have a problem its usually voltage related and just up it a bit for your Vdimm in the bios. Besides HyperX, you may want to try OCZ Ram. By far the most time consuming period of putting together my rig 3 months ago was deciding on the ram.
-MB: So many choices. But you really have 3 good ones to go with, of course it would help if we knew what you were going to be using the new rig for/how much you have to spend. On the short list; ABIT IC7 (875), ABIT IS7 (865), ASUS P4P800 Reg or Deluxe Version (865). There are sooo many reviews out there on each board, read a few on each board, or try to find a round up of the 3. A note of warning: the recent ABIT IS7 & IC7 have newer redesigned Northbridge Heatsink/fans that are far superior to the first design that came with the boards. Make sure you ask before you order. you don't want one of the older style fans, as they are very loud (before I replaced mine with the newer HSF, it was by far the loudest thing in my case), and prone to failure, and they are less efficient at cooling the MCH. Also, some folks don't realize this, but the IC7 DOES NOT come with a integrated NIC, only the more expensive IC7-G version.
--CPU: If you have a big budget and want the high end then go with the P4c 3.0Ghz Retail CPU. I wouldn't get this cause I don't have the budget, and even if I did I still wouldn't and I did not. I got a P4c 2.4 Retail from New Egg which goes for $171 now I believe. I overclocked mine to 3.2Ghz. But, you said you weren't OCing, so you may want to go with the 2.6ghz perhaps for a bit more. Anything higher than that, and to me you hit the law of diminishing returns.
--Cooling: Go with the Retail Ver of the P4c. It comes with a adequate Intel cooler, that does the job nicely. Also the Retail P4 comes with a 3 year warranty compared to just 30 measly days with the OEM CPU. Of course the Intel cooler isn't the quietest, so once you get it, you may want to test it out for a while and then think about replacing it after a few days/weeks if noise is an issue. Though with the ABIT boards at least, there is a option in the BIOS called FanEQ where you can throttle down the fan speed, making things a good deal quieter. For case fans, at least one one the front, one in the rear, and one on the side is nice, but not mandatory. With ABIT boards, you can monitor your temps in windows so if you feel that your case temps are too high, then turn up your fan RPM's or get more fans.
Well I hope I answered you're questions, and some you didn't even know you had yet. It would help me out, and others with recommendations if we knew your budget and more specifically what you plan to use your new rig for. Like Internet, gaming, Video editing, Etc. For example, if your going to be doing Video Editing, then you'll have to spend a bit more than I mentioned above and definitely get a new Video card. Just a thought. I wold recommend for you to get all of your stuff form NewEgg. You might spend $2 or $3 more for your CPU or MB, but it's definitely worth it for the piece of mind. If your going to get a ABIT board, call ahead and make sure it comes with the newer style Northbridge fan; you will be glad you made the call. If NewEgg can't guarantee you get the new NB HSF combo, buy the board from ABIT's official
online dealer.. Excaliberpc will guarantee you get the new NB HSF, if you specify that you want it, and you do. They are great, I've ordered from them before, and for the ABIT boards come with free shipping. Also with NewEgg, I just found out that for hardware if you have a FULL YEAR to return if for a RMA (sans CPU & RAM, of course) if anything goes wrong. This policy is unheard of.
Well this is 'all' I can think of for now, keep us updated and let us know what else you may need. Not really sure how much you could get for your old board/CPU? I bought enough parts with my new system that it's essentially a whole new PC, and so I'm keeping my old BH6 based rig and going to install W2K Pro on it. Good luck.
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