These Athlon LEs are ridiculous.

[Agentbolt]

So I bought the parts to put together a DIRT cheap new computer (mostly just for the fun of putting it together, this new one's still hardly a powerhouse) and while sorting "All AMD" by price, the absolute cheapest one was an Athlon 64 LE 1600. I also got the cheapest AM2 board available (Biostar NF520-A2) and 2 gigs of the cheapest RAM available (Transcend JetRam DDR2-800)

A few of the reviews of the Athlon LE mentioned this, but apparently they overclock big time, so I figured I'd try it. The max my motherboard can do for overclocking is to increase the VCore by percentages, so I increased mine by 10%, and just for kicks tried setting it to 275 FSB with the HT at 4X. It actually booted, although it bluescreened during stress testing. So I set it to 270, it booted fine, and it's rock-solid stable. 2.97 GHZ. I later was able to set the VCore down to 5% over spec because I realized I was being limited by the RAM, not the processor itself. (The RAM is running at DDR2-980, according to CPU-Z, FSBRAM ratio is CPU/6, which seems impossible so I'm likely reading something wrong there)

This is stock everything, as well. HSF, everything. Motherboard Monitor reports the highest temps I'm hitting to be 45 C.

If anyone's looking for some ridiculously cheap components to try messing around with, I'd recommend these three. With a good video card (currently this one has an X1650pro running in it) this would actually be a not-horrifyingly slow machine, although obviously not dual-core. Not bad for 130 bucks.

 

[Markfw]

"R.I.P. C2D Rig"

What happened to it ?

 

[Agentbolt]

Man, I need to get that out of my sig. It met with an accident while I was carrying it. If no one ever listens to anything else I ever say, listen to this: Don't trust the case handles on Rosewill cases.

 

[GundamSonicZeroX]

Originally posted by: Agentbolt
Don't trust the case handles on Rosewill cases.

Have reported this to Rosewill? Is there some kind of guarantee that your PC won't fall apart while carrying it?

 

[krnmastersgt]

I would assume the company that built your case with handles assumed it could handle a system's weight, either that or they are incredibly stupid, you should probably ask them to replace your system/money equivalent.

 

[AmberClad]

Originally posted by: Agentbolt
Man, I need to get that out of my sig. It met with an accident while I was carrying it. If no one ever listens to anything else I ever say, listen to this: Don't trust the case handles on Rosewill cases.

What part of the rig actually broke though? Did the HSF fall off and smash everything? Or just the shock of the fall?

 

[richwenzel]

congrats on the new build...

i hope that you can get some compensation on the lost build...

can you post some pre/post OC processor benchmarks, just to give us an idea?

thank you.

 

[Agentbolt]

Originally posted by: krnmastersgt
I would assume the company that built your case with handles assumed it could handle a system's weight, either that or they are incredibly stupid, you should probably ask them to replace your system/money equivalent.

I appreciate the concern, folks, this happened close to a year and a half ago, though. The handle broke while I was carrying it, the case fell, the HSF snapped off its hinges and smashed the video card, one of the sticks of RAM broke, and the CPU even cracked somehow. PSU and hard drive failed to make it, either, after throwing them in a different case to test them.

There was some forward momentum when it fell because I was swinging my arm at the time as well. I don't think I could put that one on Rosewill, it was just a freak accident.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: Agentbolt
Don't trust the case handles on Rosewill cases.

Don't know if it was a Rosewill, but a buddy of mine had the plastic handle of his mid-tower rig break as he was carrying it in to a LAN party.

:thumbsup: on the Athlon LE. What does the BIOS monitoring report as the vcore now?