help w/hw selection, motherboard, cpu, ram

  • Thread starter Thread starter Lee Goldblatt
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Lee Goldblatt

Abit NF-7 looks like good inexpensive motherboard.
I will overclock slightly.

I need an AMD XP, what would be a good one?
I see 18 micron, 13 micron, barton core, 333 fsb, 400fsb (?)
What's a barton core?
I assume less the micron and more the fsb is faster(?)
I want the most bang for the buck - the best value.

What RAM should I get? I'm still back in the days of PC100.
"Dual DDR (400) 2700" - what does it mean?

I
 
Lee said:
Abit NF-7 looks like good inexpensive motherboard.
I will overclock slightly.

I need an AMD XP, what would be a good one?
I see 18 micron, 13 micron, barton core, 333 fsb, 400fsb (?)
What's a barton core?
I assume less the micron and more the fsb is faster(?)
I want the most bang for the buck - the best value.

What RAM should I get? I'm still back in the days of PC100.
"Dual DDR (400) 2700" - what does it mean?

I
Click to expand...

MB =Epox EP-8RDA3G
CPU=AMD ATHLON XP 2500+
RAM=Kingston 512 MB VALUERAM DDR400
VID=Aopen NVIDIA GFORCE4 MX440 8X
HSG=Aopen QF50A BLACK


This is a basic setup. It cost $379 from newegg. It's not a *real*
gamer system but for the price is one hell of a pc for just about
everything. You can run the fsb at 200 straight up and run the processor
at what it calls 3000+ without a single hiccup. A small increase in the
voltages is all that's needed. You can also not oc it and it works
great. To me this is a hell of a value. I've built a couple of machines
around this basic set up and it's a real good working machine.

Epox mb's are excellent and I've had absolutely no problems with them.
This one comes fully adjustable in all respects for the overclocker.
Plus they are very reasonably priced. The Barton 2500+ may be the best
deal around right now with the retail box coming in at $90 on newegg.
The retail version now comes with a different hsf with a copper core.
The fan runs at about half the speed of the old ones and is much quieter
while still cooling the processor just as well. The case by Aopen is not
ugly like a lot of cheap cases and comes with a good power supply. The
systems I've put together in this case have been rock solid stable. The
Kingston memory is good memory at a good price, Valueram is not the best
out there but in benchmark testing it tests as well as a lot of more
expensive memory. Plus since it's "Kingston" you're pretty much
guaranteed it'll work right out of the package without any problems. The
video card isn't anything special just decent graphics at a very
reasonable price.


All you need to do is add an operating system (Win XP) and the drives
of your choice (floppy, optical and hdd). You'll have a system that
would retail for about twice of what you have in it.


This is my $0.02 and it's not the only way to do it by any means, there
are a bunch of cheaper parts out there. I know because I tried to do it
that way once too. I now have a one year old machine that's dead, it was
cheap, it worked like it was cheap and it died very young.



Roger
 
Lee Goldblatt said:
Abit NF-7 looks like good inexpensive motherboard.
I will overclock slightly.
Click to expand...

Go with the NF7-S
I need an AMD XP, what would be a good one?
Click to expand...

The XP 2500 is a great deal with, probably, the most bang for the buck. It
is the Barton with 333 fsb. Many suggest that it can be overclocked easily
to 400 fsb, making it, effectively, a 3000+. I've overclocked one to 2800
by just adjusting the CPU multiplier.
I see 18 micron, 13 micron, barton core, 333 fsb, 400fsb (?)
What's a barton core?
I assume less the micron and more the fsb is faster(?)
I want the most bang for the buck - the best value.
Click to expand...
What RAM should I get? I'm still back in the days of PC100.
"Dual DDR (400) 2700" - what does it mean?
Click to expand...

If you are hoping for an unlocked CPU (the one I got was) and just want
to increase the CPU speed via the multiplier, then you can get PC 2700 ram,
which
is double pumped 166 MHz and runs at 333 MHz. You want to ideally keep the
RAM and CPU running in sync.

However, if you were to increase the FSB to 400 MHz, to speed things up even
more, then you should get PC 3200 RAM (double pumped 200 MHz = 400 MHz).
Many overclockers will use a different ratio for the RAM, lowering it to 5:4
or 3:2, so that they can raise the CPU speed even further (memory speed
isn't usually included within the realm of bragging rights), but, as far as
I've read, AMD boards run best with synchronized timings.

Finally, get RAM with a CAS latency of 2 (the lower the faster). You might
have to back off the RAM timings and increase the voltage, depending on how
high you decide to overclock.

Cheers,

Dave
 
.....snip,,,,
This is a basic setup. It cost $379 from newegg. It's not a *real*
gamer system but for the price is one hell of a pc for just about
everything. You can run the fsb at 200 straight up and run the processor
at what it calls 3000+ without a single hiccup. A small increase in the
voltages is all that's needed. You can also not oc it and it works
great. To me this is a hell of a value. I've built a couple of machines
around this basic set up and it's a real good working machine.

Epox mb's are excellent and I've had absolutely no problems with them.
This one comes fully adjustable in all respects for the overclocker.
Plus they are very reasonably priced. The Barton 2500+ may be the best
deal around right now with the retail box coming in at $90 on newegg.
The retail version now comes with a different hsf with a copper core.
The fan runs at about half the speed of the old ones and is much quieter
while still cooling the processor just as well.
Click to expand...

Are there instruction on how to attach the heatsink and fan
to the cpu?
The heatsink compound?
Any links appreciated.

....snip
 
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