AMD and CPUs

[timechange]

Ok this is for all of you that have an AMD Athlon XP etc.

Do you have a retail CPU with the default heatsink and fan or an OEM CPU with custom heatsink and fan?

I currently have a 1.4 GHz Tbird and my damn Delta fan is so loud I am contemplating to upgrade to a 2.1 GHz Athlon XP Retail. Any suggestions are welcome.

[tribby]

Originally posted by timechange
Ok this is for all of you that have an AMD Athlon XP etc.

Do you have a retail CPU with the default heatsink and fan or an OEM CPU with custom heatsink and fan?

I currently have a 1.4 GHz Tbird and my damn Delta fan is so loud I am contemplating to upgrade to a 2.1 GHz Athlon XP Retail. Any suggestions are welcome.

I'm in the same boat as you, my 1.4 GHz thunderbird sounds like an airport. I'm looking in to a new case and power supply. Slashdot has some neat articles on silent PCs with helpful hints on which cases are extra quiet, etc. Try searching them for "silent pc"

[EHG]

Funny you should ask as this morning I just changed fans and hs on my ATHLON XP1700+.

I was using a DRAGON ORB3 fan w/hs very impressive looking and lots of copper but it was louder then I had hoped -

I purchased the ATHLON XP1700+ BOXED CPUas a package with my SOYO Dragon+ mb therefore the ATHLON had the stock AMD fan and heatsink packaged with it (as opposed to buying an OEM or bare CPU.
$184.00 PACKAGE Frys Electronics Los Angeles

I'm overclocking the CPU at the moment I'm at at 1608 Mhz (144Mhx x 11.5 / vcore at 1.84v) thats about the same speed as the XP1900+.

I have a roomy mid tower case w/ rear case 80mm exhaust fan and the VIA chipset has it's own small sink and fan.

At the moment i'm running 1608 my cpu temp is 113F cpu volt is 1.84 cpu fan 4687rpm system 93F

READS OUTS ARE STAYING VERY STABLE AND THE SYSTEM IS EXTREMELY STABLE AS IN ROCK SOLID REGARDLESS OF HOW MANY APPS - WINDOWS - ETC ETC I HAVE GOING.

I'm really happy with my SOYO k7Dragon + motherboard - lots of goodies - and if your considering up grading you might want to check out it out at the soyo site or the new SOYO KT333 DRAGON PLATINUM ULTRA at SOYO MOTHERBOARDS

Main dif between my Dragon with the VIA KT266A chipset and this new board is the this uses the new VIA KT333 chipset

handles up to pc2700 ddr dram mine pc2100
support for ULTRA DMA 133 mine ULTRA DMA 100
USB2 mine USB 1
RAID 0,1, 0+1 mine 0,1

I assume you mean the ATHLON XP 2100+ which does not run at 2.1ghz or 2100 Mhz but will out benchmark competitive (INTEL) 2100Mhz processors - i DOUBT VERY MUCH INTEL WOULD STAND FOR THAT IN AMD'S ADVERTISING AND PACKAGING IF THEY COULD PROVE OTHERWISE!

Anyway thats the latest of the xp chips and you are going to pay probably about $100.00 premium because of that - Look at the diff in price between the xp1900 and the xp2100

Unless you are running your system with MULTIPLE HEAVY DUTY RESOURCE SUCKING APPS ALL RUNNING SIMULTANEOUSLY - you probably won't notice the diff between the 1900 and the 2100 cpu's

Good Luck!!

[timechange]

thanks for the tips and I was obviously not thinking straight when I typed "2.1 GHz" LOL

I am currently clocking my (unlocked) 1.4 to 1.578

So the stock fan/sink combo works ok?
Awesome. I spent $38 on that damn copper heatsink and delta fan and although I have the PC in a cabinet I can still go deaf from the noise!

[timechange]

Actually the XP+ naming convention compares the new CPUs to older Athlon Thunderbirds, not to Intel ones. But regardless, as we all know, they kick Intel's butt in every benchmark Of course they run hotter too !

[jkeller]

Originally posted by timechange
Actually the XP+ naming convention compares the new CPUs to older Athlon Thunderbirds, not to Intel ones.

Well, that's the official story that they give. But it's readily apparent that they're intending people (especially non-technical people) to read it as a comparison to Intel. As you say, though, Athlons almost always are the better benchmark performaers.

[EHG]

You should check out the AMD site they have extensive info on cooling -

prior to reading their info I wouldn't have thought that there would be a difference whether the power supply drew air from the back or bottom of the ps case and there is a significant difference

Also MOTHERBOARDMONITOR is a free software program that monitors (depending on motherboard and the sensors onboard) cpu temp system temp fan rpms - all voltages - simple to set up and CUSTOMIZE- and there is a simple chart to see whether it supports your motherboard. MUCH better program that the VIA hw monitor that ships with soyo boards - the programs works for boards that support both intel and amd chips

http://mbm.livewiredev.com/

one last thing if you find for any reason your running hot - hot day - running allot of apps - just take off 1 side of the case - takes care of any temp problems usually.

[Ron Kuris]

If you want silence, check out water-cooled technology. There are some really nice (although expensive) almost completely silent water-based cooling systems out there.

They are, as they say, "way cool"

Ron

[tekygonnabe]

A gamer buddy of my brothers, runs a water-cooled system. They play every friday evening till the wee hours of the morning. Everything worked ok until he added a new drive (secondary)... that following friday before the clock struck midnight, disaster struck him. His machine suddenly quit, for no apparent reason... about 20 minutes later after taking the cover off, low and behold, he found the culprit... a kinked water line (reduced the water flow enough to allow him to play a while, but not enough to take the pressure *heat*)

It fried his AMD 1700... needless to say, he pays more attention to details now!

[EHG]

Chances are that if he is running OR WAS RUNNING a AMD 1700 his motherboard has heat, fan and voltage sensors.

If he had been using MBM5 (motherboardmonitor5) a great FREEWARE utility - the alarms would have went off well before the processor fried itself and he would have saved himself some $$.

Oh he wasn't at the machine when this happened? No problem the utility can be tied to numerous SHUT DOWN NOW apps - in other words if the alarm goes off you can preinstruct it to SHUT THE COMPUTER OFF!!

At the MBM site:http://mbm.livewiredev.com/

they have a very extensive list of all the motherboards the program supports.

[tekygonnabe]

Thanks EHG... I had already sent him the link from your ealier posting... He emailed back laughing it off, saying thanks for you posting it and me forwarding it. He IS using a similar program now. Ya know what they say of hinesight, hey!

That's a lesson he won't soon forget, I'm sure

[eXodus]

i wish i had liquid cooling my pc is as loud as a mofo lol, buty i have a OEM AMD Athlon XP 1700+ with a volcano 7 on it (quiet) but its my vase fans that are loud.. Its decendt I think

[EHG]

lol - on my conglomeration of processed sand (silicone) and petrochemicals (plastic) it's the pwr supply fan that is the culprit. Which is substantially more expensive to replace then a case fan.

Although it really is not that bad or it doesn't seem that bad until I shut down the machine - at which time there is a very noticible difference I am considering a solution
a friend of mine recently utilized and seems to work - and not affect either sys or cpu temp.

He obtained some very dense foam - almost the consistency of a sheet of rubber somewhere between an 1/8th to a 1/4" in thickness (not sure) and he glued it to the interior side panels and then also on the exterior sides and top. This particular foam (I'll have to find out when I can where he got it) is dark gray and has a very pleasant and modern looking pattern embossed into it - My personal opinion is that if anything it improved the appearance of the case and noticibly reduced the noise.

He just did this a few days ago - So I think I shall wait a bit longer and if it continues to be as functional as it is without side effects I will probably do the same. His investment was under $10.00 including the foam and the cement to adhere it.

If I decide to go ahead and try this insulation method I'll post and let you know the results.

As far as other monitoring programs are concerned my soyo motherboard ships with their own. The k7dragon is shipped with an ITE hw monitor and my previous k7VIA mb from soyo shipped with a VIA hw monitor. Neither one comes close to the freebie MBM5 when it comes to customizing or the amount of options available. As a matter of fact what got me to looking for an alternative was when I utilized the ITE monitor that came with this MB the DAMN THING WAS UTILIZING 100% of my CPU - kinda blew me away - After I had installed everything and turned on the machine I opened task manager and it was reporting 100% cpu usage while I was in an idle state instead of the usual 0-3%! Process of elimination and it was the damn ITE monitor - MBM5 reports a maximum mem usage of 6000k and no noticible cpu usage.

[stu42j]

Check out Zalman CPU Coolers http://www.zalmantech.com/

They can cool an Athlon XP 2100+ at only 20dB/A!