Rebuilding an old PC

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speedlever
Posts: 128
Joined: Sat Sep 30, 2006 1:39 pm
Location: NC, USA

Rebuilding an old PC

Post by speedlever » Fri Jun 01, 2007 4:37 am

I just replaced on old PC with a new C2D I built on an E6600/P5B-E and Vista/64. I'm pretty happy with the new box thus far.

I planned to wipe the disk and install Vista Home Premium on the old PC and let the kids use it for games, etc. It is a P4/1.8 Northwood on an Asus P4S533 (which would be an upgrade to their old PII/400Mhz box). The old PC has a Fortron 450w PSU and a couple of optical drives (one is DVD/RW) and 1.5 Gigs of PC2700 ram as well as an eVGA 6600GT (AGP) card.

The old PC had been generating random BSODs for various reasons and I thought it had driver issues. But after pulling all the pci cards out and formatting and installing with the Vista/32 disk (bought an extra VHP license with the family deal), I am still getting random BSODs with different error msgs. Sometimes it says memory_management and sometimes I see IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL.

I've run Memtest86 (v1.65), Drive Fitness test, tested memory sticks one by one, etc. to no avail. Except that late in the testing, the most recently purchased ram began showing errors.

Edit: even with one stick of ram, the old PC would BSOD. So I don't think the ram was really a problem.

I gave up on it and took it to a local shop and they could not duplicate the ram faults. They were not able to isolate the problem and we agreed that the most likely culprit is the mobo.

At this point, my simple rebuild is now a mobo/cpu replacement project.. but with cost being more of a factor this time around.

I've come up with a couple of scenarios to replace the mobo and cpu and want to know what you think. One caveat, I want to keep my eVGA 6600GT video card (AGP) which limits my mobo choices. I'm willing to give up the DDR ram (man, I can't believe how much DDR2 ram has come down in price since I bought in January).

The options below differ by about $60. Is there any reason to prefer one over the other? Any other obvious solutions I've missed?

Yes, I know I'm restricting my choices by keeping the 6600GT/AGP card. But ya gotta draw the line somewhere.

Intel solution:
Image

AMD solution:
Image

speedlever
Posts: 128
Joined: Sat Sep 30, 2006 1:39 pm
Location: NC, USA

Post by speedlever » Fri Jun 01, 2007 10:23 am

Hmm. Did I make this too long?

No opinions on either of these options?

elmopuddy
Posts: 11
Joined: Sat May 26, 2007 6:38 am

Post by elmopuddy » Fri Jun 01, 2007 11:37 am

maybe you can find a good bundle at tigerdirect.com..

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... -M860-2600

not the best, but good enough for the kids to play some games

speedlever
Posts: 128
Joined: Sat Sep 30, 2006 1:39 pm
Location: NC, USA

Post by speedlever » Fri Jun 01, 2007 11:49 am

Thanks for the suggestion, but I think I'll pass on this option:
****************************************
"REVIEW BY: OTMAN Reviewed May 31, 2007
I bought this along with a Sempron 3000+ box set. The installed BIOS doesn't support the new Sempron. A new BIOS is available on the PCChips site but installation requires a working system. Now I have to try & find an older sempron chip or send it back. Seems a lot of people has the same problem. Do your research before buying this board, too bad I didn't :(

REVIEW BY: gbray Reviewed May 30, 2007
got this combo installed the cpu and motherboard. on bootup the process says unsupported cpu and will not allow you to go into the bios"
******************************************

Are the boards I mentioned above problematic too?

elmopuddy
Posts: 11
Joined: Sat May 26, 2007 6:38 am

Post by elmopuddy » Fri Jun 01, 2007 11:53 am

The second system you listed is PCIe I believe

speedlever
Posts: 128
Joined: Sat Sep 30, 2006 1:39 pm
Location: NC, USA

Post by speedlever » Fri Jun 01, 2007 12:17 pm

The MSI K9MM-V Socket AM2 VIA K8M800 board is listed by Newegg as an AGP board. Have they made a mistake?
http://tinyurl.com/3dg4vv

The ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA LGA 775 VIA PT880 board is listed as having both AGP and PCIe slots for video cards.
http://tinyurl.com/2byo7f

There may well be better options. But I'm finding that by trying to keep my AGP card, I am really limiting my choices.

I thought it might be time to consider AMD since I haven't had an AMD processor since the Thunderbird processor was out. But maybe the Intel C2D has no match at the present and I should stick with that.

For only $60 difference, it's not that big a deal. I could keep my current DDR PC2700 ram, but I could only use 2 DDR slots and would only have 1 Gb. But for $70-80, I can get 2 Gb PC2 6400 ram.

I just have to determine the best CPU/mobo for the application.

speedlever
Posts: 128
Joined: Sat Sep 30, 2006 1:39 pm
Location: NC, USA

Post by speedlever » Fri Jun 01, 2007 12:44 pm

I've looked at every DDR2/800 board that supports AGP on Newegg. The two boards listed above seem like the only/my best options.

There are some PCChips and ECS boards but they only support DDR2 533.

So... AMD or Intel on this project? Anyone have any experience on either of the 2 mobo's listed above?

Any problem with the Patriot memory and those boards?

bonestonne
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Post by bonestonne » Fri Jun 01, 2007 1:15 pm

well, if you want, its entirely possible to just find a replacement for the motherboard. if the motherboard is replaced, as long as its the same board, you wont need to replace anything else. unless the board costs an arm and a leg, it would be cheaper than another new system.

speedlever
Posts: 128
Joined: Sat Sep 30, 2006 1:39 pm
Location: NC, USA

Post by speedlever » Fri Jun 01, 2007 4:28 pm

Well, it's a pretty old board... I'm not sure where to find one. But I'd rather get a more modern one at this point. I don't have enough installed yet to make a reinstallation a big deal.

IsaacKuo
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Location: Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Post by IsaacKuo » Sat Jun 02, 2007 4:44 am

It doesn't need to be the same motherboard; any socket 478 motherboard will do. They're still available. For example, NewEgg has 9 of them. TigerDirect has four of them.

A 1.8Ghz Northwood is a perfectly good CPU.

speedlever
Posts: 128
Joined: Sat Sep 30, 2006 1:39 pm
Location: NC, USA

Post by speedlever » Sat Jun 02, 2007 5:51 am

Isaac,

You are right. But of those 9 boards, only 4 have AGP (not including the recertified one), and one of those is not in stock.
http://tinyurl.com/37h9wu

However, for $200-250 or so, I can pretty well modernize this old PC. It'll cost me $150-200 more than just replacing the mobo with another 478 board. Except that I think I'll need to get at least one stick of 1 Gb DDR ram to bring the DDR ram to 1.5 Gb minimum. The net cost savings would be more like $80-130, less if I go with 2 Gb ram.

Edit: I see that DDR2 ram is cheaper than DDR ram these days. Interesting. I can get 2 gigs of DDR2/800 for just a few bucks more than 1 gig of DDR/400 ram.

I probably need to tweak my Vista/64 installation, but I see (using Process explorer) 1.5-1.6 Gb used pretty frequently with PE, WExplorer, Thunderbird, several instances of Firefox, etc. open.

Vista/64 idles around 900Mb right after boot-up for me. VHP may not take up as much ram as V/64... not sure yet.

Part of me wants to give AMD a whirl. But I have been unable to find any information about that MSI board. I've found a lot of positive info on the ASRock board and the e4300. So I'm leaning towards the Intel solution.

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