I am planning an upgrade

E

Easykill1978

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 19, 2006
Messages
479
Hi all I am planning an upgrade in the next 2 weeks.

Now my current rig is

AMD64 3500+ (939, Venice Core)
ASUS A8N-E motherboard
2 X 512MB kingston ram
X850XT Plat Edition video card
Creative Audigy 2 ZS sound card
Pinnacle HD DVB-T/ Analog TV and FM Card.
A dlink wifi card.
3 X 200 Gig Sata II hdd
Pioneer DVD burner 108 model
all wrapped in aThermal Take Soprano case with a 400Watt true power psu.

What i am planing to get is

1- Gigabyte GA-8I945P PRO motherboard ( i dont like Wintel boards [ie not made by asus/gigabyte/msi/dfi] and it has the 3 pci i need)
1- Intel Pentium 4 950 Boxed (Dual Core 3.4GHz LGA775 2x2Mb Cache)
1- Two 1 gig sticks of DDR2 533 memory sticks kingston.
1- Zalman CNPS9500 LED cpu cooler and Arctic silver thermal paste.


my question is this...
Do i need to get a 24 pin atx psu and also plug in the 4 pin power cord by the cpu?
Will my psu hold up to the weight of the cpu?


if you are wondering why not waite for conroe, first off we in australia are generally a couple of months behind the us and also the initall price will be beyond me, my setup is gonna set me back 843 Australian dollars. and my old rig will become my htpc. :) and it is also that if i wait we (my wife and i) will find something else to spend my upgrade money on


anyway thanks :)
 
is the 940 much different in price from a 950 where you live? I only ask this because for us its a pretty big difference (the 940 to 950) and the performance difference is not enough.
 
the intel d 950 $480 and the intel d940 is $371 can you give me some website on performance for the 2 because i noticed at toms and here that the 950 is close tothe 4200 x2 amd cpu.

will my psu hold up to the power demands and can i use an atx 24 pin power supply and still connect the p4 cable to the to its connecter by the cpu.
 
I would get a 920 or 930 and overclock it. (even cheaper)
The 920's are perfect b/c they all have been hitting 3.73Ghz at 1066FSB which makes it essentially a 965 Extreme Edition (minus the Hyper threading).

My 920 hit 4Ghz fairly easily with a little bump in voltage, but I decided to keep it at 3.9Ghz b/c it did that speed at default voltage.

If you can get the Intel BadAxe motherboard revision 304, you can use it for when Conroe comes out. And it does have some overclocking options. I think you can probably set the FSB to 1066 with the 920. So that should be a no brainer overclock.
 
I never overclock my gear, mainly due to fear of anything going wrong.. i simply dont have the $$$ to get a new cpu after i get these parts. it has been 8 years since i owned an intel and well i got no idea about the bios stuff in it. so hmmm i will consider what has been said. also the only thing ram i can get is ddr2 533 ram here in australia, the next gen isnt easily availble (long wait to get if ordered i believe.)
 
Well they didnt have any d950 instock so i got the d940 instead.

so my new setup is

-Intel D940 3.2 Gig Cpu
-Gigabyte 8i945p pro motherboard
-2 gig A-Data ram (matched pair)
-Antec True Power 2 550 Watt Power supply. (previous one was a TT 430watt)
--(wont bore you with the rest, usual.. oh why not list them i am proud of it.)
- Creative Audigy 2 ZS
- D-Link Wireless network card
- Pinnacle HD tv turner
- 2 SATA2 WD 200GB hdd
- 1 IDE WD 200GB hdd
- 1 Pioneer 111 dvd burner
- 1 1.44Mb floppy drive (yup i still use this sucker, they still havent made usb bootable easily)
All housed in an a Thermal Take Soprano case.

I am so happy with my system, why didnt i make the switch ages ago... ? Tho when i turned it on for the first time i got the fright of my life. as none of the fans turned on. i was like what?? oh no i damged the cpu mud :( but then when the heat level climbed they truned on, i am very impressed BF2 is smooth as glass now :) and windows really gets going now :)
I cant wait to put it thru the ringer tonight and push my new comp as hard as i can :) now to convince the wife i need a raptor hdd, any ideas lol
 
You won't "break" anything if you just gradually raise the FSB, a little bit at a time. Why not do a like a 5% overclock just for the hell of it?
Set your FSB to 210, everything should work fine like that!

nice set up. I would be jealous (only) IF you overclocked it and beat my 3.9Ghz at stock voltage. :)

I built someone a PC in one of those Soprano cases. They're nice & quiet. I'd prefer the Tsunami, b/c its aluminum... but then again its more expensice too.

P.S. Since you're not planning on overclocking anything I would have bought an Intel BadAxe 975 motherboard, so you could upgrade to Conroe down the road with a drop in chip replacement. (monday morning quarterbacking :) )
 
yeah i will try that, the overclocking be interesting. tho when summer gets here it would have to go to stock speed it averages between 36 ~44 degrees C here. i cant upgrade for a while and will sit with this till it struggles in games. the badaxe mobo is hard to get here and i need the 3 pci slots for my cards. who knows maybe i can ask my wife for a water cooled system, hehehe who knows :D
 
haha, ask your wife? anyway, hm.... i don't see a graphic card in that purchase (am i blind or is it really just not there?). Are you using onboard graphics or something you've got lying around? I think it'd be good if you atleast spent some money on a graphic card so can up your graphics a little bit. I'd recommend a 6800GS if you can find one, or if you wanna keep it under 110, look at this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150130 , it's a 6800XT Xtreme, for about 100 after mail in rebate. The graphic card can overclock to about a GS (it's an XFX, XFX upgraded the ram, so it's better than the normal 6800XT)
 
oops here my graphics card is a Saphire X850XT PEdition video card, i got that oced to its limits :) tho wants a htpc now so i will try and get a new vid card, delaying it till the dx10 cards come out :)
 
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