Slow, Cheap, Quiet, all 120's - Proposed Rig.

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orionlion82
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Slow, Cheap, Quiet, all 120's - Proposed Rig.

Post by orionlion82 » Sat Nov 20, 2004 6:43 pm

After a year or so thinking I could Get Away With "Knossos", A Xaser III ( I know, I Know) as a semi quiet rig, and finally mastering underclocking/undervolting when needed -
and allso OC/OV when desired, I have elected to get away from the "Flexible- quiet or 747(okay, avation enthusiasts would understand 727 better) rig" and use the gaming rig for gaming and OC - noise be damned - and build a proper quiet rig for everyday tasks.
Stats for Knossos : P4P800 - P4 2.8 Northie, Aspire ~500(ughhhh), Dell(who knows brand) 350, Old Maxtor 80GB and Samsung 160 (with whine, Darn!)

PROPOSED RIG "Sven": ALL 120mm cooling, Cheap, Quiet, Slow.
( I believe a reknown member here once said " Cheap- Quiet -Fast ; Pick Two, my apologies for not remembering your handle, you have tought me all I need to know about S-PC)
Finally I have absorbed this information to the point of deep understanding.
Now for the stats:

Northie, slowest 478 I can get my hands on before they dissappear.
Something along the lines of a good undervoltable/Underclockable MOBO
The P4P800 has served me well, and I can underclock Knossos to 1.2 GHZ 89.25FSB(EDIT- Correction:89.25 cpu EXT freq 357FSB). @ minimum 1.1 volts with most fans off( Right now "Knossos" is putting of 17.9W CPU according to the "cpupower" application reccomended on the main site - allso GF4 Ti 4200 underclocked, )
So i think I may stick to P4P800DLX
The Mighty XP 120, and if it dosnt fit, the XP 90
A solid 120mm cooled bottom fed PSU hopefully 350W or greater preferably 400 or 450....
A Thermaltake (give me a chance) Sviking (I know mods may be needed)
and some not-too-crappy RAM)
Samsung HDD's (without whiny motors)
A Diamond Miltimedia 4MB V(viper)330AGP card (riva 128), free from my ladyfriend.
A nice quiet combo CD/CDRW/DVDRW combo drive that I may find under "reccomended" on the main site. have not looked yet.
other parts will be spares, "the slower, the cooler" (and therefore the better...)
Case damping using cheapo mousepads inside case-
trying to find the rubber fanmount vendor...(the manufacturer site listed on the main site in not that clear on exact products)
Maybe New 120s if the case, or PSU if the stock ones arent Quiet enough...
might look into isolated/suspended HDD mounts, must do more reasearch on that.....
SO for now this is where it stands.... "SVEN" ALL 120MM air Cooled, Slow, Cheap, Quiet. (assuming 478 prices drop with the 775 market).
I would love it if the comunity passed along some more wisdom here in my direction, as the design phase is about to end and the purchases will begin to commence soon.
Thanks,
Orionlion82 :D
Last edited by orionlion82 on Sun Nov 21, 2004 10:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

burcakb
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Post by burcakb » Sun Nov 21, 2004 12:59 am

Are you really wed to Pentiums? Athlon64s are currently the ruling performance/cool running champs. If you go the oldish s754 route you might get to pick all THREE :) and maybe make your gaming rig this one :)

Example: My s754 Athlon64 3000+ cooled with Z7000 running at 3.3V running at full speed of 2000 MHz undervolted to 1.2V from 1.5V maxes out at 49C at full CPUBurn load. For light work like divx, email, surfing, it undervolts to 1100 MHz and 0.90V and 24C)

Ahh, the Viper card could be too ancient an AGP version to run on current mobos, you might want to check that out.

Optical drive NECs recommended

If you're stuck on 120mm PSUs Seasonic Tornado or Nexus (the 4090 version) has good reviews.

Ralf Hutter
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Re: Slow, Cheap, Quiet, all 120's - Proposed Rig.

Post by Ralf Hutter » Sun Nov 21, 2004 6:22 am

orionlion82 wrote: The P4P800 has served me well, and I can underclock Knossos to 1.2 GHZ 89.25FSB @ minimum 1.1 volts
How are you undervolting that P4P800?
orionlion82 wrote:(assuming 478 prices drop with the 775 market).
Doesn't look like that's going to happen. As NWs have become more scarce, their prices have gone up because theirs more demand for them than there is of the hotter, slower Prescotts. I'd expect this to continue now that Intel has finally announced the cancellation of the entire NW line.

I'd think about AMD A64 if I was you.

orionlion82
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Post by orionlion82 » Sun Nov 21, 2004 12:09 pm

Where to begin?...
Right,
First, I had some numbers goofed up there, they have been corrected.
Secondly, I underclock normally in BIOS, boot to XP - then use AI booster to get the voltages down and the speeds down a bit more. Note that once underclocked, AI booster will show external Freq below 100MHZ (all the way down to 50MHZ)
I have to admit, I know absolutely nothing of AMD's or the appropriate boards and other compatible hardware. May be a better way to go, but in that case I have alot to learn about AMD's...
The Viper might be worth a try, since the rig would only need the bare minimum anyways...Allso got an S3 virge GX ISA (4mb) that works allright in knossos, could be worth a try if the viper turns out to be just TOO old...
Really like the idea of ALL 120MM cooling,no reason not to have it from my point of view...I think I had a look at some reviews on the SS Tornado- generally it looks like there are some good quiet ones to be had in the Under 450W range, which should work fine for that...
My Ladyfriend just bought the TT Sviking, and I am fairly attached to the idea, but the price, features, and configuration are just about everything Ive wanted. Its a smallish case though and I have some concerns about cramming an XP-120 in there...
with all that cooling, it could be a good gaming rig, but that is not really my intention (oh so tempting) :)
time for another round of reasearch... thanks all...
(Edit - were it a snake it would have bitten me, but one of the most respected sig's on the block lists an Antec 3700BQE, somewhat comprable to the Sviking, allthough it is more quiet-oriented rather than cooling-oriented...Tempting as well...)

keith
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Post by keith » Mon Nov 22, 2004 7:38 am

I've got a 1.6 Ghz Northwood CPU if you're interested in it. I had a power surge that smoked my motherboard, so I rebuilt my box with an Athlon64. I have a second system that I can test the CPU in to make sure it's OK. Let me know if you're interested. Any and all funds will go towards 120mm Nexus fans for my monster tower... :lol: KSL2112 /at/ yahoo /dot/ com is the best way to get in touch with me.

Best of luck with your project.

Keith

orionlion82
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Post by orionlion82 » Mon Nov 22, 2004 3:42 pm

Thanks all,
Unfortunately, I have decided to postpone my design/build of "sven" for an indefanite preiod. -possibly wait for the "cooler" prescotts to come on full force, and wait a bit for 1026FSB on the Intel side, allso the general mayhem in the Intell market is a bit too much to wade through right now... Nothing against the A64, but after furthering my reasearch, I dont think im quite ready yet to take the plunge untill my understanding of the AMD side is much clearer... at least I have a good handle on the project's direction when it comes time to build...
--Keith, many members of the SPCR community may have interest in your Northie, poke around a bit...Used to run a 1.8 Northie, and after I fried my board (socket 423? Dell, fan failure) I gave it to a friend( not the brightest), who thought it would cool to barbeque for a few seconds... after 10 seconds on the grill, he cleaned it up and popped it in his rig, booted right to windows... seems older Northies are tolerant heat/voltage to some mystical degree... Im sure someone will appreciate it...
again, Thanks -
orionlion82

Simonbun
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Post by Simonbun » Mon Nov 22, 2004 5:18 pm

I don't mean to be rude, but what is there to research on amd64 systems? Its all simple as pie tbh.

Either go with socket 754 or socket 939, and choose a CPU with the same sockettype, and voila. If you need fairly decent hardware advice, go to www.anandtech.com (wich you probably know already).

orionlion82
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Post by orionlion82 » Mon Nov 22, 2004 11:58 pm

No worries Simon...
Being sucked into the Intel market for so long, I have untill the last 2 days seen anything AMD as totally ailen...it even took me a few hours to grasp that you can depend on pincount/socket to translate, but fortunately, as I understand now, except for the socket and on-chip memory controller (hmmm, is that wat it was? I forget) its the same darned exact thing,( in terms of MOBO'S) pretty much equivalent to any 478 out there... processors are supposed to be more efficient too. I am now split 50/50, - If I were sold on AMD, I dont think the current computer market turmoil would be worth a second thought, however in my own context, its time for more reasearch, and a bit of wait-and-see... a quick question here Simon, is 754 going the way of 478?

Simonbun
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Post by Simonbun » Tue Nov 23, 2004 6:15 am

Yes the 754 socket is on its way out too, but will still be around for a good year or so...

Fact of the matter is that if you choose socket 939 over 754 you don't even pay much more, and you've got a more futureproof system.

If I had to assemble a system today it would be an Asus or MSI socket 939 motherboard with a Athlon64 3500+ 939. You cannot go wrong with something like that performancewise, futureproofwise, coolingwise, noisewise, ... ;)

But if you are waiting it out a bit, just check anand's system guides. He mostly makes solid choises.

Straker
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Post by Straker » Tue Nov 23, 2004 4:16 pm

Simonbun wrote:I don't mean to be rude, but what is there to research on amd64 systems? Its all simple as pie tbh.

Either go with socket 754 or socket 939, and choose a CPU with the same sockettype, and voila. If you need fairly decent hardware advice, go to www.anandtech.com (wich you probably know already).
once you're up to speed it's not bad, but between 3 diff. gens + two sockets of A64s currently available, the reasoning behind their labeling (eg huge speed differences countered by cache/90nm), the fairly large differences between different mbs/chipsets and the lovely way different mbs and revisions of memory controllers ensure there is never any "best" (or even guaranteed to work) RAM, the current situation is pretty ridiculous. :)

edit: also, there's almost no price difference between s754 and s939 A64s at the 3000-3200+ level, would be well-advised to go with a winchester instead of an older s754/939 CPU.

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