Ok, so I bought this board back in Feb of 05. It currently has an Athlon 3800 processor and 2x512 Kb Ram. I want to upgrade this board and have found that it can take a significant amount of upgrading.
I love this board and I don't have the money for an entirely new system. It's no longer my main system so my intentions are to turn it into a PVR / media center server system. So here is what I have done so far in terms of upgrading.
- 4 x 1Gb Kingston RAM PC3200
- New Video Card (Not that important)
- AMD Opteron 170 Dual Core
- 5 Sata Drives
2x36GB Raptor's (for OS)
2x1TB 7200 - RPM (for video storage)
1x80GB 7200 - RPM (Music Storage)
I have add some other odds and ends, but to me the most important question is why the board with all four sticks of RAM goes down to 333 MHZ. I read it would happen, but why? It says if they are single sided RAM then I would be ok and it would clock at 400 Mhz, but there is no such thing. I have searched high and low and haven't found a single piece of RAM like that.
So here are the questions I have:
- Does anyone know where I can find 4 1GB RAM Chips that are single sided?
- Is 4GB of 333 Mhz RAM better than 2 GB of 400 Mhz RAM?
- Do you think this setup will work well as a PVR / Media Center system?
- Is the Opteron 170 going to improve my system performance significantly over my Athlon 64 3800+?
- 5 SATA Drives, will I be able to get them all running? I ask because I am not sure if I can have both SATA drive sets (1-4 Nvidia and 5-8 Silicone) working at same time?
- Finally, was the upgrade worth it's money, about $400 total so far, not including the 2 1TB SATA Drives as I needed those even if I didn't upgrade and if just bought a new system?
I love this board and I don't have the money for an entirely new system. It's no longer my main system so my intentions are to turn it into a PVR / media center server system. So here is what I have done so far in terms of upgrading.
- 4 x 1Gb Kingston RAM PC3200
- New Video Card (Not that important)
- AMD Opteron 170 Dual Core
- 5 Sata Drives
2x36GB Raptor's (for OS)
2x1TB 7200 - RPM (for video storage)
1x80GB 7200 - RPM (Music Storage)
I have add some other odds and ends, but to me the most important question is why the board with all four sticks of RAM goes down to 333 MHZ. I read it would happen, but why? It says if they are single sided RAM then I would be ok and it would clock at 400 Mhz, but there is no such thing. I have searched high and low and haven't found a single piece of RAM like that.
So here are the questions I have:
- Does anyone know where I can find 4 1GB RAM Chips that are single sided?
- Is 4GB of 333 Mhz RAM better than 2 GB of 400 Mhz RAM?
- Do you think this setup will work well as a PVR / Media Center system?
- Is the Opteron 170 going to improve my system performance significantly over my Athlon 64 3800+?
- 5 SATA Drives, will I be able to get them all running? I ask because I am not sure if I can have both SATA drive sets (1-4 Nvidia and 5-8 Silicone) working at same time?
- Finally, was the upgrade worth it's money, about $400 total so far, not including the 2 1TB SATA Drives as I needed those even if I didn't upgrade and if just bought a new system?
