My upgrade plan, tell me what you think.

markanini · Post by **markanini** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 2:54 am

My current system is:
Antec Sonata
Asus P4PE
Celeron 2 GHz
512MB
Matrox P650
Emu 1212m
Plextor Premium
Seagate 7200.7 160GB

Here's what have been thinking about doing with my system:

Antec Sonata -> Antec SLK3000-BQE
Better airflow and roomier case is easier to work with.

Asus P4PE -> Intel D875PBZ
Intel motherboards are supposed to be very stable and I get SATA and AGP 8X. I also get an Intel network interface which is supposed to be one of the better ones.

1x Seagate 7200.7 160GB IDE 8MB cache -> 2x Samsung SpinPoint P80 160GB SATA
Obviously I want something quieter and store more space than I have now.

Two Papst 120mm case fans and Rheobus fan controller
I can turn the fans up when I'm not home to increase the lifetime of of the compononets. Also it's my understanding that these go way below 5v so I can set fans really low if I want to.

Celeron 2GHz -> Intel Pentium 4 533MHz 2.4GHz 512kb Northwood
Since I work with music and virtuall instrumments and effects and also do a lot of audio encoding this will probably make things a lot faster. It also seems to be a relatively cool, fast and cheap processor. I'll cool it with a hermalright XP-120 + 120mm papst fan.

Memory 512MB -> 1024MB
Memory probably helps alot when you load large audio sample librairies. Not sure if this is enought to turn of the virtuall memory, being able to turn it off would be great.

Finally I wan't to get rid of my Hansol 19" CRT and get a 17" TFT monitor. I guess any cheap one will do. I am bothered by the way it buzzes and if I record a electric guitar close to the monitor the pickups hum. I suppose I wont have these problems wih a TFT monitor?

The goal with this system is to have a stable fast and quiet system that I wont have to bother uppgrading for years. As it seems now things are getting to hot to cool even with the best cooling solutions without being exposed to noise so I want my system to be the last system with a reasonable heat/performance ratio. All right that might have sounded a bit pessimistic. Hopefully the trend will turn around in a few years and silent computing will be mainstream.

So do you think these would be wise choises for my neads or would you do it differnetly?

EDIT: Corrected typos(sleepy) and added paragraph about my goal with my upgrade.

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 6:49 am

Of course everyone else will tell you to switch to AMD, but if you want to stick with P4, the 875PBZ is a great board to go with. As for the CPU, don't use a 533MHz version, use one of the 800MHz versions that also come with Hyper-threading and Dual Channel memory support. The CPU's to look for would be the 2.4C, 2.6C, 2.8C or 3.0. All of these run at 800MHz and have H-T and Dual Channel support. If you're going to do this, make your move soon as the 800MHz NW CPU's are getting harder to find.

burcakb · Post by **burcakb** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 8:51 am

Well, I wouldn't want to make Ralf a liar so..

Go the AMD Athlon64 route

Edward Ng · Post by **Edward Ng** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 9:43 am

No matter which route you choose, if you pick a board that allows undervolting, it will make it easier for you to achieve a silent build. I do not know if the Intel brand boards offer precise control over things like FSB or core voltage; I heard they had made one or two enthusiast-oriented boards, but I'm not sure if the one you picked out there is one of them. Both, K8s and P4s benefit from undervolting at stock speed, and will do so willingly. I am unsure how well a 2.6C will undervolt, but I do know that a K8 should be able to undervolt ~0.3 to ~0.4 off the stock of 1.5 and still run 2GHz, which is plenty of performance for the greater majority of people.

-Ed

markanini · Post by **markanini** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 12:17 pm

So which AMD processor should I get? theres a bunch of different ones with differnet sockets and buss speed and prices and I'm just confused

And then the next question is which motherboard should I get? One I can underclock with, right? What experiences do people have with the boards otherwise?

Edward Ng · Post by **Edward Ng** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 12:27 pm

Vast amount of K8 undervolting info is available in this thread.

-Ed

Tyrdium · Post by **Tyrdium** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 12:35 pm

I'd go with a decent Socket 939 motherboard (Socket 754 is being phased out), and an Athlon64 3000+ or higher, depending on how much you want to spend.

Edward Ng · Post by **Edward Ng** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 12:38 pm

If you're worried about getting phased out, then wait for PCI-Ex and K8.

After all, AGP will be phased out sooner than Socket754.

-Ed

Tyrdium · Post by **Tyrdium** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 1:13 pm

Socket 939 PCIe boards will be out quite soon; the Micro-ATX one I'm looking at is due out in late December.

markanini · Post by **markanini** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 5:25 pm

How about motherboard chipsets? There's Via and nVidia, what's the difference between these two?

Edward Ng · Post by **Edward Ng** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 5:32 pm

I've been avoiding VIA since my K7 days, as I had too many PCI-related issues with their KT133 and KT133A chipsets.

Personally I've not had any complaints to be made for nForce2 or nForce3, and nVIDIA's chipset are generally faster than VIA's as well. They happen to cost more, so nVIDIA-based boards are usually more expensive than VIA-based boards.

Personally, I think that if the world were perfect, we'd have machines based on Intel chipsets driving Athlon 64s.

-Ed

markanini · Post by **markanini** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 7:12 pm

EDIT: Nevermind

burcakb · Post by **burcakb** » Sun Nov 28, 2004 11:45 pm

My A64 is VIA based. It's OK if you plan to just assemble and never fuss with anything. nVidia allows better tweaking IMO.