Good Socket 370 CPU?

markanini · Post by **markanini** » Tue Jan 21, 2003 10:13 am

I've settled for a Soltek SL-65KV2-CT board http://www.soltek.de/English/home/01.htm, cause it was reviwed in a swedish computer magazine and it got good scores, was stable and fast, and its easy to get where i live. But when it comes to choosing CPU i'm not sure. I was thinking about getting a via processor but i dont think i would be able to stad the low performance, ive heard the Intel Celeron Tualatin runs cool and is cheap, and performs good. Anybody have any recommendations?

DaveSimmons · Post by **DaveSimmons** » Tue Jan 21, 2003 10:14 pm

A tualatin celeron is a good choice for higher performance tasks like divx decoding.

Check your BIOS settings to see if you can "undervolt" to make it run cooler, which helps if you are using a "fanmate" or similar to slow down the CPU fan by cutting voltage to it.

See the "undervolting" thread in this forum for more details.

zetor · Post by **zetor** » Tue Jan 21, 2003 10:37 pm

A general advice on buying any CPU is to buy the slowest model, as long as the stepping/core model is the same. The slowest model is obviously the coolest one, and if you want to overclock it, it's also the fastest one since the bus speed will be a lot higher due to the low multiplier compared to slower versions using the same bus speed.

I myself have a 1000MHz Tualatin-Celeron that I run at 1560MHz (156MHz bus) at default voltage with a Swiftech MCX-370 cooler cooled by an 80 mm Panaflo thru a duct that concentrates airflow over the CPU.

This seems to be very efficient. CPU temps varies between 34-39C (on-die thermal diode readings) from idle to full load (CPUBurn, Prime95 etc).
And it is also, of course, really quiet!

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Wed Jan 22, 2003 5:35 am

Yeah, you can't beat the Tualatin Celerons for price, performance and running cool. I'd get the 1.0A or the 1.1A. Around USD$40 and you can usually run them undervolted, if your MoBo/BIOS allows it.

tridion · Post by **tridion** » Wed Jan 22, 2003 10:33 am

A really good motherboard for the tualatin is the Abit ST6. They allow underclocking (if necessary) and undervolting.

Be careful though, the ST6 doesnt support the tualatin out of the box. It requires the latest bios to be flashed to it which is a problem if you cannot get the motherboard to detect the CPU.

It took me some time fiddling with the settings in SoftMenu III to get it to post and allow me to boot from the floppy.