Sempron Fooln' Around

[trents]

I decided I needed a cheap spare AM3 CPU for trouble shooting purposes in case I have problems or in case friends do or they just need a spare part. Picked up a Sempron 140 off ebay last week for $20 I think. I decided to see if it would unlock to a dual core and it did, on a spare Gigabyte 790X-UD4 mobo with two out of four memory sockets dead. I had it laying around and a couple of sticks of DDR2 ram I've kept hold of for a while. Not only unlocked but unlocked and overclocked stable. I didn't fool much with the overclock but got it real easy to 3.375 ghz from the stock 2.7, cooling it with a Rocketfish 92mm tower cooler (knock off of the CM Hyper TX3). I only had two gigs of ram so I decided to install Lubuntu which is a lite version of Ubuntu. Boy, Lubuntu made that system lightening fast! I was impressed with that distro. These parts were assembled breadboard style on the floor. My wife wasn't crazy about it.

One side note from this experience is that before I installed Lbuntu I tried to install Windows XP and found it near impossible because Microsoft no longer supports it. And that means Windows Update is nonfunctional for that product. I didn't expect that. IE 6 is utterly unstable and practically unusable when used with modern internet design technology. I couldn't even install Chrome because I couldn't get some updated OS files that Chrome needs. It was a nightmare! So, I scrapped it and went to Lubuntu.

By the way, if you're looking for a bargain on ebay, track components whose auction end time falls on a Friday or Saturday night when a lot of people are partying or gone for some reason.

 

[RGone]

Interesting read there "trents". Dual core for 20 bucks with 600 or so extra Mhz for free. Not bad. Odd about that WinXP thing since my brother and I both keep an XP machine runnable since my Dad never moved forward and it is hard to fix XP without seeing it sometimes. I use Firefox on mine with 3 gigs of ram without a lot of issue and only using XP SP2. Lubuntu sounds neat since I just had someone tell me "again" about using Ubuntu.

Nice heads up man.
RGone...

 

[Mandrake4565]

Gigabyte 790X-UD4 mobo

You have anymore of those lying around Trents? I'm trying to find a home for an Athlon X2 6000 I have. As far as XP goes, I have it running on my 955be machine in Triple Boot Win 7, XP and Ubuntu. I believe I still get updates on it, but I may be mistaken. It is painfully slow though compared to Ubuntu and Win 7.

 

[rescuetoaster]

Just so you know - XP is actually still supported, but you have to manually download service pack two, install it, then download service pack three and install it. From there, you can get the regular updates. I just did this on one of my ancient ultraportables about a week or two ago.

 

[Johan45]

Funny how old parts just tend to accumulate. I've got everything I need to set up a Phenom X4 9850. Only short a PSU. I've considered selling them but they're almost like my replacement children now that mine are finally out of the house. I even have a copy of XP x64 that at the time just about drove me crazy. Nothing worked right, drivers sucked and the S/W developers weren't too keen on making it work. Now look where we are. The 64 bit world was 10 yrs overdue.

 

[Mandrake4565]

I'd like to find a decent mobo for the 6000+ because I'm getting the itch to go cold on something. I have a dry ice place 5 minutes from my house and everytime I see it all I can think of is overclocking. I need help.

 

[Johan45]

I know the answer to that buy DELL from now on

 

[RGone]

I'd like to find a decent mobo for the 6000+ because I'm getting the itch to go cold on something. I have a dry ice place 5 minutes from my house and everytime I see it all I can think of is overclocking. I need help.

I would just tell you to c00lit but I think that seems to be the problem already. The desire to cool something. Hehehe.
RGone...

 

[Mandrake4565]

I know the answer to that buy DELL from now on

It's not in my DNA

I would just tell you to c00lit but I think that seems to be the problem already. The desire to cool something. Hehehe.
RGone...

Funny Gonester

 

[trents]

Just so you know - XP is actually still supported, but you have to manually download service pack two, install it, then download service pack three and install it. From there, you can get the regular updates. I just did this on one of my ancient ultraportables about a week or two ago.

You're right and I found the Microsoft web site to get those but I would need to do it on my other computer and burn it to disc since on the scabbed together breadboard rig I was playing with all I had to browse the net was IE 6. IE 6 wouldn't display the frames images correctly on that web page . The "download" button was obscured. And like I said, I couldn't get Chrome to install. Didn't try Firefox, however. I got tired of fighting with it and was in a hurry to put the stuff away since it was cluttering up the room. So I went with the Lubuntu. I was mainly trying to verify that the ebay chip I got was good and see if it would unlock so my mission was accomplished.

 

[xsuperbgx]

790xud4 is one of the top clocking boards for sempron. I recently bought one for Ln2 duties.
There are results on hwbot over 425 fsb.

 

[Aldakoopa]

Don't make me miss my old Sempy any more than I already do. I regret just throwing that thing to the side... I lost it, and when I found it again all the pins were bent. Ruined.

 

[trents]

790xud4 is one of the top clocking boards for sempron. I recently bought one for Ln2 duties.
There are results on hwbot over 425 fsb.

The board has the weird "Hybrid Firmware" item in bios right above the ACC stuff. Toolk me a while to realize that this needed to be enabled in order to "keep" the core unlocker active. Otherwise, every time I rebooted it would revert back to single core mode, even though it was perfectly stable when unlocked.

 

[mammut]

You're right and I found the Microsoft web site to get those but I would need to do it on my other computer and burn it to disc since on the scabbed together breadboard rig I was playing with all I had to browse the net was IE 6. IE 6 wouldn't display the frames images correctly on that web page . The "download" button was obscured. And like I said, I couldn't get Chrome to install. Didn't try Firefox, however. I got tired of fighting with it and was in a hurry to put the stuff away since it was cluttering up the room. So I went with the Lubuntu. I was mainly trying to verify that the ebay chip I got was good and see if it would unlock so my mission was accomplished.

trents, time to use nLite for your WinXP for any future WinXP installations. Saves you a lot of work, by integrating the SPs readily to the disc.

 

[keny]

I love the sempys, there hands down my favourite CPU to overclock, you can get 4ghz out of one if those little monsters, and I have had loads of them and definately the 140's are the preferred ones for unlocking, and for some reason on my giga 785 board I needed to dissable CnQ unless the unlock would fail, it sounds like it has the same layout as you're board Trents with the hybrid firmware option, that looks a bit scary when you activate it I think I will hunt some more sempy 140/145's down now, got the itch for a few more (already have about 4-5 lying around) I think I need to curb the hoarding

 

[Wipeout]

trents, time to use nLite for your WinXP for any future WinXP installations. Saves you a lot of work, by integrating the SPs readily to the disc.

I agree.N-light is a good program.It took me years before I switch to Windows 7,but so glad I did..I used N-light to make a custom disc for xp,and then saved as an image file after all the updates.I find it easier to add programs and updates after making a basic custom disc.I basically used it to get rid of all the bs you'll never use.

I love how cheap amd cpu's have become I bought Athlon II X2 270 Regor 3.4GHz AM3 65W Dual-Core new, for 55 dollars.No need to oc though,eventually I will use it for a htpc.

Trents.Nice deal from flea bay! For 20 dollars,and being able to unlock cores = pretty sweet.

 

[trents]

Come to think of it, I've used nLite in the past to integrate SP1 into XP Home. Seemed to work okay. Can you do that with SP2 and 3 as well?

Wipeout, love your avatar! LOL!

 

[mammut]

I only did SP1 to SP2 & S3 and it worked.

 

[Wipeout]

Come to think of it, I've used nLite in the past to integrate SP1 into XP Home. Seemed to work okay. Can you do that with SP2 and 3 as well?

Wipeout, love your avatar! LOL!

Thanks Yes you can.Infact,your better off to download the service packs separately,then integrate them into n-light to save time on windows updates.

 

[trents]

Thanks, guys for all your suggestions about slip streaming. I pulled it off successfully and this time the install and the updating is going like a snap.