P4 and Socket Choice

[Cino]

Hi. I'm new here, and I came for one reason, help. Once I educate myself, I will come here to participate regularly, but for now, I have a dillema. I plan to buy a P4 1.8 ghz. When browsing, I discovered 2 different socket (pins) sizes, 423 and 478. Which one should I get, and what's the difference? Also, can someone suggest a decent ATX mobo for the P4 1.8 ghz, I would like to have a AGP 4x slot and 5 PCI slots, with the option of overclocking in the future. My limit for the mobo is $180 USD. Please Help, Thanks in ahead.

-Confused Rob

P.S. Is a 300 Watt power supply enough for the P4?

 

[Nate420]

Welcome Rob

The socket 423 was the first P4(willamatte) and 478 is for the newer Northwood. The Northwood has 512K L2 cache, compared to 256K(i think) of the Willamatte. Go with the 478 Northwood for sure. Northwood is also built on the .13 process, willy was built on .18. That translates into higher frequencies and lower temps for the northwood.

I would personally recommend the Asus P4B266 for the Motherboard, I love mine.

If you have a good 300W supply, it will run fine. I'm running my 1.6A(the A means its a Northwood) at 2.2Ghz with a Antec 300W supply.

 

[GrumpyMan]

Should you want to get an RDRAM board I would suggest the Abit or the Asus versions. Abit will overclock higher from what I've read. I'm happy with my Asus.

 

[Trashman]

Hey Rob......should also point out that the socket 423 P4 is dead.....make sure you get socket 478, preferably "Northwood".
Should point out as well, that the "williamette" comes in the socket 478 flavor alsol......"Northwood" processor's are designated by the letter "A" after cpu rating...such as 1.8"A" GHz= Northwood.

 

[Cino]

Hi. Thanks a lot, especially for the quick responses. I was looking at motherboards, and I found the one you suggested, and I like it, It's perfect (I chose the one that doesn't have audio and USB 2.0, link below for the one I chose). I also decided to go with the Pentium 4 Processor (Northwood) 1.8GHz, 400MHz FSB, Socket 478 512KB Cache (link below). I need some help with the memory, I'm not sure whats compatible and what I should buy, I think the ones I listed below are compatible, but I'm not sure which one to chose, and are the differences significant. Please help, thanks in ahead.

Processor:

a) http://www.googlegear.com/ggweb/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=1.8A-512

Motherboard:

a) http://www.googlegear.com/ggweb/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=240239

Memory Choices:

a) http://www.mushkin.com/cgi-bin/Mushkin.filereader?3c8049b006f2604e273fc0a801020628+EN/products/990856

b) http://www.mushkin.com/cgi-bin/Mushkin.filereader?3c8049b006f2604e273fc0a801020628+EN/products/990892

c) http://www.mushkin.com/cgi-bin/Mushkin.filereader?3c8049b006f2604e273fc0a801020628+EN/products/990841


I know I'm kind of pushing my luck here by asking all these questions, but I am kind of lost. It's been awhile since I built a comp (4 years) from the ground up.

Thanks again!

-Confused Rob

 

[TwilightZone77]

Indeed, all the memory you listed is compatible. I would go with the third link, the $125 one. The only difference I can see on the three chips is the memory timings, which shouldn't too significant a difference, not enough to justify their extra cost. Under most cases, too, the cheaper ram can run with a CAS latency of 2 fully stable, the same timings as the $174 ram.

 

[Cino]

Great, Thanks a lot for all your help, I really appreciate it!