P4 478-pin to 423-pin socket adapter - anyone tried it?

[GHacker]

I needed a chip to put in the Intel D850GB (423-pin) motherboard I acquired. I looked around the forums and found a good deal on a P4 1.5GHz Willamette chip in the 478-pin package with HSF, so I figured I could use one of those 423 to 478-pin socket adapters to make it work. Got the adapter, put it all together, hit the power switch, and - insert drum roll here - NOTHING. No boot, no beeps, no fans, not even a bump. Tried the chip in a 478-pin mobo at work and it booted into Win2K without a hiccup. Apparently the Intel mobo doesn't like my socket adapter. I should have known better - Intel won't stand for any nonsense of any kind. Just like how they never wanted people to use a slocket in their motherboards, or overclock in any way.

Has anyone had any success with one of these adapters in this motherboard, or any for that matter? Any tricks for getting a stubborn system to boot with one? I would just get a 478-pin mobo, but I have all this expensive RDRAM. And I can't just sell the motherboard because it may be faulty. The guy I got it from gave it to me because he couldn't get it to work with his setup (which used a 423-pin P4) - the thing would boot and load Windows 2000, then lock up after the initial reboot. I think there was something wrong with his setup because it was a new mobo and the failure rate on new Intel boards has been very low in my experience. Anyway, it's a very different symptom than what I'm getting, so I think my problem is the socket adapter. He could never RMA the board even though it was new because he never got a retail receipt for it. Even if I could get a receipt from someone on the boards I couldn't RMA it without first getting a working CPU to get to the point where his failure occurred.

Anyway, if anyone could offer some technical advice or even an amusing anecdote on using one of these 478-pin to 423-pin socket adapters, I would be most interested in hearing it. I've started a WTT thread in the For Sale / Trade forum to see if anyone wants to trade me a 423-pin chip for my 478-pin.

 

[BDawg]

Yes, Tom's did a review of them last week, I believe.

 

[GHacker]

Bump.

 

[GHacker]

Bump.

 

[GHacker]

:disgust:

Got new info on the socket adapter debacle. I dug around a little and found that the "no name" adapter does have a name - it's an ECS 5397. Or it least it looks a heck of a lot like the ECS 5397 that I've seen on several retailers' sites. Can't find any reference to it on ECS' site. It may be the one that came along in the retail package with their 423-pin motherboards, which would explain why they are all over eBoy and online dealers if people were building systems up with the 423-pin chips. Anyway, at least one of the web sites cautioned that this adapter WOULD NOT WORK with any variant of the D850GB motherboard I was trying to use. I guess I should have done this research beforehand, but I got my hopes up when I saw that the PowerLeap said it would work. Actually when I checked futher into the PowerLeap compatibility listing I found that you had to specify that you would be using this mobo when purchasing the adapter - apparently they have some special version of the adapter to work with this mobo! Curses! Well let that be a lesson to anyone hoping to use a socket adapter on an Intel D850GB - just get the 423-pin chip. Or, if you want to squeeze every last bit of life out of your 423-pin platform and have the bucks, get the "special" version of the PowerLeap. I, not having the bucks, am still hoping for some bites on my WTT post in For Sale/Trade to see if anyone will trade me a 423-pin chip for the 478-pin!