Greetings all. I'm new to the community and new to playing with CPUs. I've been working with computers for 18 years, and have handle a lot of different things, but this is new and I need some help.
I have a Dell Optiplex GX 240 that I've built up a little. Easy stuff, you know? New cards, drives, memory, a fair amount of XP/SP2 tweaking. I want to get a little more performance, though, than the stock 1.8GHz chip.
I have in front of me upgrading to SATA, but that's lower priority. I'm up to 1GB of RAM with pretty raided Ultra ATA drives. Blah^3.
So, I looked up possible upgrades on the web and found PowerLeap's P4/2.8GHz/400MHz/478pin/512K chip, but I was impatient. I ended up buying a P4/2.8eGHz/800MHz/478pin/1MB cache chip from Fry's. (Hopefully I'll have this dialed in one way or the other before my 15 days return window expires...)
I knew I was changing the bus speed, but I figured between the other choice at Fry's (533MHz) and this 800MHz chip, the even multiple would work out. At the least, I was assured I wouldn't lose performance.
I installed the chip as best I could. First off, the fan that came with the new chip wouldn't fit because the original fan bracket wasn't tall enough. I figured I'd try the old heatsink and fan combo anyway. At this point I just wanted to see it boot -- that'd be cool enough.
When I plugged in the power cord, though, the fan kicked on immediately even though I hadn't pressed the power button. I got no video. The power button on the front of the case was amber instead of green, and I couldn't power down without pulling the plug.
I tried this a couple times, but ended up reverting my system to it's original config. Everything booted back to normal.
So, where do I go from here? I surmise a few options, tell me if I'm way off:
- Buy the Power Leap chip.
- Discover some hardware config that's lacking (dip switches or whatever)
- Get a new fan post and properly install the included fan (could that _really_ be the problem?!? I can't imagine.)
- Overclock my existing 1.8GHz chip.
I'm totally open to suggestions and would appreciate any feedback.
If you prefer direct communication, my personal email is blo@27.org. I'd even be willing to share my cell if that would work. Thanks in advance.
I have a Dell Optiplex GX 240 that I've built up a little. Easy stuff, you know? New cards, drives, memory, a fair amount of XP/SP2 tweaking. I want to get a little more performance, though, than the stock 1.8GHz chip.
I have in front of me upgrading to SATA, but that's lower priority. I'm up to 1GB of RAM with pretty raided Ultra ATA drives. Blah^3.
So, I looked up possible upgrades on the web and found PowerLeap's P4/2.8GHz/400MHz/478pin/512K chip, but I was impatient. I ended up buying a P4/2.8eGHz/800MHz/478pin/1MB cache chip from Fry's. (Hopefully I'll have this dialed in one way or the other before my 15 days return window expires...)
I knew I was changing the bus speed, but I figured between the other choice at Fry's (533MHz) and this 800MHz chip, the even multiple would work out. At the least, I was assured I wouldn't lose performance.
I installed the chip as best I could. First off, the fan that came with the new chip wouldn't fit because the original fan bracket wasn't tall enough. I figured I'd try the old heatsink and fan combo anyway. At this point I just wanted to see it boot -- that'd be cool enough.
When I plugged in the power cord, though, the fan kicked on immediately even though I hadn't pressed the power button. I got no video. The power button on the front of the case was amber instead of green, and I couldn't power down without pulling the plug.
I tried this a couple times, but ended up reverting my system to it's original config. Everything booted back to normal.
So, where do I go from here? I surmise a few options, tell me if I'm way off:
- Buy the Power Leap chip.
- Discover some hardware config that's lacking (dip switches or whatever)
- Get a new fan post and properly install the included fan (could that _really_ be the problem?!? I can't imagine.)
- Overclock my existing 1.8GHz chip.
I'm totally open to suggestions and would appreciate any feedback.
If you prefer direct communication, my personal email is blo@27.org. I'd even be willing to share my cell if that would work. Thanks in advance.
