On your AMD CPU cooler question, the AMD stock cooler works well for me. It whines a bit - not very loud but audible - at full speed. Fortunately, it is easily tamed with SpeedFan; I slow the fan speed to 1100 or so from 3300 and it is inaudible - the CPU temp goes up 1C or so with the slower fan. Of course, when the CPU is loaded the fan speeds up and becomes audible. The price is right, it cost $5 more to have the fan included with the CPU.
I have been using abit boards exclusively. they have been very stable and problem free.
one gripe I guess would be they tend to use junk for the NB fan but thats a cheap fix.
one gripe I guess would be they tend to use junk for the NB fan but thats a cheap fix.
I've heard really bad things about the abit uguru chip. Something about proprietary software, and it hogging resources. Is there anything to that?
The 7000 will come to within 1/16 of an inch of your video card. If you use any of the artic coolers, it will bump the brace on the back side of the card. I would recommend a xp-90. I had a 7000 on and opted for the xp and dropped 3 degrees C all the way around and now have some room.
Get the MSI.
madoka
Diamond Member
- Jun 22, 2004
- 4,344
- 712
- 121
I tried putting in a negative review for a crappy Aspire PSU (first build - before I knew any better) and it was never accepted.
I too am very suspicious of all the glowing reviews on newegg. You don't see that level of positive reviews for the same items from other sites such as Amazon.
CaptnKirk
Lifer
- Jul 25, 2002
- 10,053
- 0
- 71
I've reached the point through a history of using different equipment where I
only buy 2 boards -
Abit for my own use, and Asus for my son, daughter, & when I build systems for friends.
They can leave them alone, do nothing to them and have a fast reliable computer.
Myself, on the other hand, like to set the Phasers on 'Kill', and fire the Photon Torpedos -
so I use Abit, other option would be illogical. (Scotty ! I need more power !)
only buy 2 boards -
Abit for my own use, and Asus for my son, daughter, & when I build systems for friends.
They can leave them alone, do nothing to them and have a fast reliable computer.
Myself, on the other hand, like to set the Phasers on 'Kill', and fire the Photon Torpedos -
so I use Abit, other option would be illogical. (Scotty ! I need more power !)
because of the weights and price differences, I have decided to go with the xp-90. coolerguys.com has a great price on that kinda stuff.
I suggest you get PCI EXPRESS board cause it's going to save you a lot of money and give you a lot more options in the future. If your only reason to stick with AGP is your old 8500 video card that you're not thinking clearly. I 'd understand if you had a 6800Ultra AGP card that you want to keep, but in the case 8500 you can just replace that one as well. If you're not ready to spend heavy on a video card, just get a 6200 for $60 which will give you performance equivalent to 9600pro - much better then your 8500. As for mobo - you should only get nForce4 based mobo as this chipset is DA BOMB (just like nForce2 was the ultimate athlon XP chipset). Athlon64 CPUs, especially the newer socket 939 overclock like crazy, and coupled with a good chipset (==NF4) it gives AMAZING results and is VERY SIMPLE TO DO. You can count on at least 25% overclock, and sometimes even 40-50%, so it's a big waste not to do it. As for stability, I believe that good overclocking will provide very good stability if you verify the final settings with rigorous stability tests. So you need to choose a NF4 mobo - the MSI K8N Neo4-F is a good choice (budget version of Neo4), or if you can spend more you can get the DFI Ultra-D. And btw, you DO NOT NEED expensive memory to be able to overclock - any old PC3200 will do -the advantage of expensive memory is negligible. Other good investments to get better performance - get the audigy2 zs - it will give immediate 10-15% higher gaming performance. So in summary, Athlon64, socket 939, pci-express, nforce4 will give the best performance, durability, compatibility and upgradability now and down the road. Anything else is just going to come up short.
neither of the boards you recommended have the number of pci slots I require, and I'm on a budget, so shopping for new pci-e cards (which are few and far between right now), and a new video card is out of the question. IMO, PCI-E isn't catching on fast enough for me to justify the cost of upgrading at this point. Besides, when I get the mondy, I plan to upgrade to the AIW x800 xt, which is an AGP card.
Well, I finally got tired of my system restarting, so I checked into it a little deeper...The temperature reading from the bios was 65....so I reseated the heatsink. Now it's 48 and the restarts are gone, so now upgrading my system isn't as vital. From what I had figured, it would cost me 440.00 to upgrade to an a64 3200 90nm 939, msi k8n neo2 platinum, and xp-90 hs/fan. Is this a good price, or should I sit on this and wait?
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