Best Mobile Athlon XP Processor?
Which is the best processor regardless of price? The choices I see are:
2500+ 45W
2600+ 45W
2200+ 35W
2400+ 35W
Which of those is the best for oc'ing to the highest speed, and with the least heat? I'm trying to build a virtually silent system. My thought for cooling is get a Zalman 7000 al/cu. Is that a good choice? Maybe a SP-97 would be a lot better? I'm trying for as silent as possible. If I get a Zalman 7000 I might swap out the fan for an Evercool aluminum fan, and decouple it with sorbathane as shown here for the ultimate in silence. I do understand the Zalman will require a few small mods to fit onto the motherboards below.
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My prime use of my computer is gaming, so performance is a must. I'm trying to choose a motherboard, I'm looking at either NF7-S 2.0 or the AN7. Main difference between them seems to be the Realtek ALC658 on the AN7, and some not so useful uGuru options, and the option for 3 bios profiles. This page under K7 comparison says they both have the 400 Ultra nforce chip, even though newegg only says "nForce2 SPP + MCP-T" for the NF7-S... so there won't be a difference from that I guess. NF7-S is better supported, and 15 bucks cheaper, and supports underclocking (something I might want to try out, possible use at night when I'm sleeping). Newegg for some reason does not provide warranty for the NF7-S board, says only avail through manufacturer for some reason. Ofcourse in either case would put on the Zalman NB47J passive northbridge cooler. Only other board I have thought about is the Shuttle AN35N Ultra, since it's around 50 bucks. Maybe go with it, and get an Audigy 2 ZS instead for sound since I'm not going to have a spdif sound system anytime soon, and figure to stick to IDE until I upgrade to an A64. As I understand Soundstorm is not used if your using an analog sound system. At the moment I'm leaning toward NF7-S 2.0 because it is so well supported.
I have not decided on Ram for my system yet, to be honest. I was looking at this Geil ram, until I discovered timings is one of the most important things in ram. This ram is 2.5 6-3-3 which seems a little high, price currently is $91. This ram has more user reviews on newegg than any other ram they sell, which originally is what made me notice it. Any suggestions on what is the best ram? It seems best to buy 2 sticks at the same time to utilize dual channel. Is it a bad idea to buy 1 stick, and then another of the same later? I haven't researched it yet, I've heard its problematic to have two sticks that are not exactly the same. I mention this because I'm trying to make this system kinda budget, since I will be get an A64 in about a year probably. I might decide to just go with 1 stick of 512, since I think that should cover me for most games, and upgrade later if/when it does not. In my experience 1GB just speeds up load time, once in the game I don't think it makes a huge difference. Again, I haven't fully researched this, just I am using a loner system and upgraded it for my buddy, and after the 512 to 1GB upgrade I didn't really notice a fps boost, just game load times were about twice as fast. This system is an older pentium 4 though, so I don't think it has dual channel mode (both sticks of ram are identical). Does the dual channel make a huge difference? Would it be worth it if I'm going the 512mb route I should get two 256 chips (seems a bad idea) to enable dual channel?
I already own a Fortron FSP350-60PN psu, which I hope should do the job for this system. I may replace the 120mm PSU fan if it has any sound, in the system it is in now the processor fan sounds like a jet, so I don't know how silent it really is.
I plan to cool the system with either Panaflo L1A, or evercool fans. Evercool allow rpm monitoring, which is nice.
For the hard drive I already own a WD160gb drive, but I may sell it for a Samsung or Seagate if it it is to loud. I was thinking if I get a motherboard with SATA, I might get dual Samsung 160GB SATA drives for a Raid 0 setup. Otherwise if I went with IDE I might get a Seagate 3 year warranty model barracuda (I'm leery of 1 year warranty drives).
For a case I am looking at Evercase 4252, Compucase LX-6A19 style case, or Antec Sonata. I like the appearance of Sonata, but it's design does not have as effective cooling and kinda limits freedom of customizations for silence as I understand. Whichever case I get I plan to sound deaden it with foam something like this stuff from AcoustiProducts.
I already have a Ti4200 GeForce 4 64mb video card, and I plan to silence it with a passive cooling rig like this one by Zalman.
Guess that completes the system I am looking at building. My main question right now is what is the best Mobile chip to get for oc'ing. I don't know if 35W is worth the loss in initial mhz, because it can be overclocked further than a 45W model. I read somewhere the 45W has a higher voltage tolerance, so it can be overclocked higher without lockups. I don't know if this is really true. As you can see running cooler is real important to my system, for silence. I sleep about 4 feet from my computer, and it is on almost all the time. However, performance is real important, since games really demand every bit out of your system. I play games for long durations sometimes, such as 8 hours straight. This system needs to be able to handle prolonged heavy use without problems, and be as silent as is humanly possible.
Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Which is the best processor regardless of price? The choices I see are:
2500+ 45W
2600+ 45W
2200+ 35W
2400+ 35W
Which of those is the best for oc'ing to the highest speed, and with the least heat? I'm trying to build a virtually silent system. My thought for cooling is get a Zalman 7000 al/cu. Is that a good choice? Maybe a SP-97 would be a lot better? I'm trying for as silent as possible. If I get a Zalman 7000 I might swap out the fan for an Evercool aluminum fan, and decouple it with sorbathane as shown here for the ultimate in silence. I do understand the Zalman will require a few small mods to fit onto the motherboards below.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
My prime use of my computer is gaming, so performance is a must. I'm trying to choose a motherboard, I'm looking at either NF7-S 2.0 or the AN7. Main difference between them seems to be the Realtek ALC658 on the AN7, and some not so useful uGuru options, and the option for 3 bios profiles. This page under K7 comparison says they both have the 400 Ultra nforce chip, even though newegg only says "nForce2 SPP + MCP-T" for the NF7-S... so there won't be a difference from that I guess. NF7-S is better supported, and 15 bucks cheaper, and supports underclocking (something I might want to try out, possible use at night when I'm sleeping). Newegg for some reason does not provide warranty for the NF7-S board, says only avail through manufacturer for some reason. Ofcourse in either case would put on the Zalman NB47J passive northbridge cooler. Only other board I have thought about is the Shuttle AN35N Ultra, since it's around 50 bucks. Maybe go with it, and get an Audigy 2 ZS instead for sound since I'm not going to have a spdif sound system anytime soon, and figure to stick to IDE until I upgrade to an A64. As I understand Soundstorm is not used if your using an analog sound system. At the moment I'm leaning toward NF7-S 2.0 because it is so well supported.
I have not decided on Ram for my system yet, to be honest. I was looking at this Geil ram, until I discovered timings is one of the most important things in ram. This ram is 2.5 6-3-3 which seems a little high, price currently is $91. This ram has more user reviews on newegg than any other ram they sell, which originally is what made me notice it. Any suggestions on what is the best ram? It seems best to buy 2 sticks at the same time to utilize dual channel. Is it a bad idea to buy 1 stick, and then another of the same later? I haven't researched it yet, I've heard its problematic to have two sticks that are not exactly the same. I mention this because I'm trying to make this system kinda budget, since I will be get an A64 in about a year probably. I might decide to just go with 1 stick of 512, since I think that should cover me for most games, and upgrade later if/when it does not. In my experience 1GB just speeds up load time, once in the game I don't think it makes a huge difference. Again, I haven't fully researched this, just I am using a loner system and upgraded it for my buddy, and after the 512 to 1GB upgrade I didn't really notice a fps boost, just game load times were about twice as fast. This system is an older pentium 4 though, so I don't think it has dual channel mode (both sticks of ram are identical). Does the dual channel make a huge difference? Would it be worth it if I'm going the 512mb route I should get two 256 chips (seems a bad idea) to enable dual channel?
I already own a Fortron FSP350-60PN psu, which I hope should do the job for this system. I may replace the 120mm PSU fan if it has any sound, in the system it is in now the processor fan sounds like a jet, so I don't know how silent it really is.
I plan to cool the system with either Panaflo L1A, or evercool fans. Evercool allow rpm monitoring, which is nice.
For the hard drive I already own a WD160gb drive, but I may sell it for a Samsung or Seagate if it it is to loud. I was thinking if I get a motherboard with SATA, I might get dual Samsung 160GB SATA drives for a Raid 0 setup. Otherwise if I went with IDE I might get a Seagate 3 year warranty model barracuda (I'm leery of 1 year warranty drives).
For a case I am looking at Evercase 4252, Compucase LX-6A19 style case, or Antec Sonata. I like the appearance of Sonata, but it's design does not have as effective cooling and kinda limits freedom of customizations for silence as I understand. Whichever case I get I plan to sound deaden it with foam something like this stuff from AcoustiProducts.
I already have a Ti4200 GeForce 4 64mb video card, and I plan to silence it with a passive cooling rig like this one by Zalman.
Guess that completes the system I am looking at building. My main question right now is what is the best Mobile chip to get for oc'ing. I don't know if 35W is worth the loss in initial mhz, because it can be overclocked further than a 45W model. I read somewhere the 45W has a higher voltage tolerance, so it can be overclocked higher without lockups. I don't know if this is really true. As you can see running cooler is real important to my system, for silence. I sleep about 4 feet from my computer, and it is on almost all the time. However, performance is real important, since games really demand every bit out of your system. I play games for long durations sometimes, such as 8 hours straight. This system needs to be able to handle prolonged heavy use without problems, and be as silent as is humanly possible.
Any input would be greatly appreciated.
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