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I need some sound advice form the pros

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GreenHorn

New Member
Joined
Mar 29, 2003
Location
down south
I know that moding and building a sysytem is on thing yet does anyone know how to mod a proporiortiezed system? I have the worst comp. on the planet yet I refuse to build a new system until I dominate this one. I am cursed to own an HP 9870 Pavillion, I like the RDRAM yet hate the rest. Can someone help me as far as modifying what I have before changing the mobo? It has an asus mobo, first gen. P4 at 1.3ghz(lol), 450watt 4fan power supply, 512meg 800mhz RDRAM, dual 60 gig. hard drives on strip mode with a raid card that I just bought and have to sell in order to install Windows XP Pro(arrrrrrrgh), the rest I will tell you guys if nessacary because I feel stupid owning this malarky yet I know it can be modded. I am going to put in a water cooling system for my CPU, harddrives,chipset and video card. I just need to know if I can overclock the cpu without changing the mobo. The mobo and cpu are stock, if I have to I will change my mobo yet my computer store friend said that it is hard to find a replacement mobo because of the design, is this true. I beg you guys not to laugh at my puter too much and will listen to all. My friend told me to ask for someone by the name of Tim, he is supposed to be a top-gun. Yet I feel that anyone with experience can help me. This system needs to become a 24 bit recording studio before I build another system not to mention the redundant super server in the works now. Any and all input will help, I wish to replace the mobo to install a 2.4 P4 cpu soon but need to make this one fly for now, short on money for now.
 
Welcome To the Forums :)

For what you are planning to do with it, that computer will still last you quite a bit.

Background information:

Pentuim 4 chips are two types, Pin 423 and Pin 478. You cannot put a 423 chip in a 478 socket, neither can you put a 478 pin chip in a 423 pin socket. Pin 423 chips are only compatible with RD-RAM. Pin 478 chips can have RD-RAM or DDR RAM (depending on the motherboard).

There are two core types as well. Willamette and Northwood. All Pin 423 chips are Willamette, some older 478 Pin chips are Willamette. Faster P4 chips are all Northwood.The difference between Willamette and Northwood is that Northwood chips are built using a smaller process. Northwood chips are amazingly stable. They also have different sized Cache memory. Willamette chips have 256kb on-board cache, Northwoods have 512kb.

Even more stuff:

Faster P4 chips (pin 478) come in different speed buses. If the chip has the letter "A" or "B" after it, it is a Northwood chip. The A means it is designed to run when the Motherboard's Front Speed Bus (FSB) is at 100MHz. "B" chips are designed to run with the motherboard at 133MHz. They are essentially the same apart from that. All Willamette chips (pin 478 and pin 423) run at 100MHZ (FSB).

Further analysis:

Your P4 chip has 423 pins, and so is a Willamette core, built with 0.18u technology. Newer P4 chips have 478 pins and newer P4 chips are built slightly smaller at 0.13u, and are called "Northwood". The problem with Willamette core chips is they can't really be overclocked well. My P4 1.6 (also a Willamette :( ) is a dog when overclocked.

The good news is that all P4 chips at 2.4 GHz are Northwood-type chips, which means they are very good at overclocking. if you get a really good chip (designated "C1", hang around the "Intel CPU's" section here and they will help) you could overclock it past 3 GHz :D watercooled with not too much bother. Get a good motherboard though if you plan on doing this.

If you are going to overclock the CPU, what you will do is change the FSB. Faster FSB = Faster Chip. :D

Example: a P4 2.4A (Northwood, runs at 2.4 GHZ, should run at 100Mhz FSB). The chip has a Clock multiplier of 24 (speed of chip/FSB)., so the speed of a chip is FSB times the clock multiplier, so here 24 X 100MHz = 2.4 Ghz.

Now, if you ran it at 133MHz (watercooled ;) ) 133MHz X 24 = 3.192 GHz.

I think the power supply is more than enough. In fact if I were you i would keep it for your new system. That PSU will run any new P4 system quite happily.

What is wrong with the RAID card? That's a shame, but i imagine you can live with it.

Make sure you get a good sound card. Were you planning on something professional?


Good luck, I hope that was helpful!
 
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