Questions regarding installing Atlhon 64 CPU

btacular

Member
Aug 24, 2004
27
0
0
Hello I'm new to your forums.

I have some questions about the Athlon 64.

1) Where does one apply thermal compound? I've seen pictures of this chip and it looks very different from the athlon xp I used to build my current system.

2) I'm looking to buy an Athlon 64 3500 socket 939 chip and mobo. Can socket 939 mobos use socket 940 heatsinks? I haven't seen a lot of heatsinks adversised for the socket 939 platform :(

3) How do I find out if the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum nForce3 is capable of using a SATA HD and PATA drive in the same computer configuration? (I want to upgrade my boot HDD to a WD Raptor and use a 160GB Parallel ATA drive in the same system for storage if possible)
 

InlineFive

Diamond Member
Sep 20, 2003
9,599
2
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1. Right on top of the heatsink on the chip.

2. In general heatsinks built for either Socket 754, 939 or 940 will work on any of those. It's good to double check though.

3. This is absolutely possible. Just set the motherboard to boot from either SATA or PATA.
 

wfbberzerker

Lifer
Apr 12, 2001
10,423
0
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1) if you buy the retail processor, the thermal compound is already applied to the heatsink/fan, but if you buy your own, you have to take special care when applying. Arctic Silver makes whats considered the best around here, and they have excellent application instructions on their site (as well as instructions for removing thermal paste that may already be on your cpu or HSF.

2)yep, you should definitely check. socket 939 and socket 940 processors are virtually identical, but again, as probleemo said, check.

3)Yep, it will definitely work. just hook up the SATA drive, install windows, and then put in the PATA drive and format it in windows. or do it how porbleemo said.