Oem Sempron 3100+ & ECS Nforce3 combo for $79 + S/H (no rebates)

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SJetski71

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Edit: Deal alive again: http://shop2.outpost.com/product/4705559

oem = no heatsink

Anybody looking for a decent deal on a cooler can get the stock heatsink for $7.26 AC using the paypal coupon code: CPPEBAY03 (deducts $3.74 off the shipping)
Alternate heatsink deal: http://cgi.ebay.com/New-AMD-OPTERON...862280845QQcategoryZ80142QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem (use the same coupon posted above)

Sempron Reviews:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/sempron-3400.html
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/28cpu-games.html
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/cpu-games2.html

Update: Some convenient download links

- Updated Nvidia Nforce3 mainboard drivers: http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce3_winxp_5.11
- Clockgen overclocking software: http://www.cpuid.com/clockgen.php (only use it if you plan on overclocking past the 250HTT limitation)
- CPU-Z utility: http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php
- Everest utility: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4181.html
 
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This is a sweet combo. This ECS board actually do overclock to 250 FSB. I have this very same combo for my wife's rig running at 2250 (9x250), stock volts with a stock cooler (from my x2 that is water cooled). Very good value, and the Sempron I received is X64. :D
 
swetmore said:
This is a sweet combo. This ECS board actually do overclock to 250 FSB. I have this very same combo for my wife's rig running at 2250 (9x250), stock volts with a stock cooler (from my x2 that is water cooled). Very good value, and the Sempron I received is X64. :D
My 3100+ combo also came x64 enabled, or at least the software claims so, and a few at anandtech claim to be running x64 Ubuntu linux on their 3100+ combo's.

Got mine clocked to 260HTT with clockgen @ 2340mhz, cas 2-2-2-11 etc etc 100% stable, will try higher someday when i'm bored.
 
Word of warning on this one - the mainboard had problems with some of the larger sticks of RAM - none of my 1G sticks would post. Cheapo 512Mx2 worked fine... Wanted to use this as to offload some of the Oracle stuff, but may not have enough juice for what I had in mind.
 
heelix said:
Word of warning on this one - the mainboard had problems with some of the larger sticks of RAM - none of my 1G sticks would post. Cheapo 512Mx2 worked fine... Wanted to use this as to offload some of the Oracle stuff, but may not have enough juice for what I had in mind.
Which 1 gig sticks did you use? Just asking so we make sure that we don't buy them. I wonder if it's a general Nforce3 chipset issue...

Otherwise a few users at AT and slickdeals(?) mentioned running 1 gig sticks without issue, which was info i was specifically looking for.
 
The onboard NIC on mine doesn't always work. Sometimes when it boots up it just wont get a IP address. Not sure if it's some kind of software issue or hardware.... i just threw in a card.

Great deal on this. Are you guys still getting Paris cores?
 
AssMan said:
The onboard NIC on mine doesn't always work. Sometimes when it boots up it just wont get a IP address. Not sure if it's some kind of software issue or hardware.... i just threw in a card.

Great deal on this. Are you guys still getting Paris cores?
Have you disabled the onboard firewall by any chance? The onboard firewall on all NF3 mobo's are a POS from i read, and tends to interfere with the onboard nic.

I purchased mine a month or two ago and got the 130nm paris/newcastle core. i wonder if this new batch is 90nm, i wouldn't bank on it but it would be nice...
 
Rosewill DDR 400 / 1024 (1Gx16) alone and in pairs. Also did some GSkill 1G (that were going for ~150 a pair not too long ago) chips as well - but it is back in the rack and I'm not pulling it out to look at the chips. (grin)
 
SJetski71 said:
Have you disabled the onboard firewall by any chance? The onboard firewall on all NF3 mobo's are a POS from i read, and tends to interfere with the onboard nic.

I purchased mine a month or two ago and got the 130nm paris/newcastle core. i wonder if this new batch is 90nm, i wouldn't bank on it but it would be nice...

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have installed it when I installed the drivers but maybe I did. I was seeing some people having problems in the Fatwallet thread a while ago so I figured maybe it was the same thing. I got 30 10/100 NICs for less about $0.88 and not much do use the remaining ones for so I didn't really mind the onboard not working.
 
i bit - looks like my file server is getting an upgrade!

/stupid tax to TX!!!!!
//$96.95 shipped 2nd day air to TX
 
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How do you think this would compare (non-OC'd & OC'd), speed wise, to what I have now..

AMD64 3000+ (754, NewCastle) core clocked at 2338.6 MHz, x10 mult on an ECS 755a mobo. Very stable on air w/ fan in silent mode.

I'm looking for a second system to run VMware ESX with two sessions, one WinXP and one Linux. I will load it with 2GB RAM.

I'm just trying to gauge your thoughts on the speed so I can get a feel for what it will be if I get it to run what I want.

thanks everyone!
 
I've been trying to get a fair machine built cheap for my nephew in law (great great kid with a mother who's gives him no love or attention at all).

He's into a lot of the realtime strategy games, and this should work well enough for now.

Thanks a ton for the info, you're gonna have made one kid very happy when I can delivery a built PC to him in a week or two!
 
Would this be a decent upgrade for my buddy who has a Athlon XP 1700+ ? He really can't afford to buy a powerful pc like most of us... but plays DOD online...
 
good to you for helping out that kid man, im sure delivering that computer to him will most likley mean a ton. cheers.
 
noobtech said:
Would this be a decent upgrade for my buddy who has a Athlon XP 1700+ ? He really can't afford to buy a powerful pc like most of us... but plays DOD online...

I bought this combo for my wife's rig to replace the XP 2500 Barton / NF2 that I later put in my Mom's rig. At stock speeds, the Sempron is way faster because of the on board memory controller. Don't let the 256k cache fool you, the 754 semprons perform so close to the standard 754 chips. There are plenty of reviews on the two comparing them, and in just about all benchmarks, they perform within 1% of each other on average.

And yes, this is an excellent choice to build a linux box / folder / and budget gaming rig. Overclocks to 250 fsb is just about guaranteed. There are some threads on other sights on this combo, and all that posted can overclock theirs to 250 fsb. The bios does let you adjust the chip voltage to up to 5%, and adjust the HTT as well.
 
looks like a decent deal...but I'm concerned about the lack of dual channel memory support...not sure if bumping from a P4 2.4 with dual channel to this would be a decent temporary step up or not...

Hmmm...
 
Limahl said:
I've been trying to get a fair machine built cheap for my nephew in law (great great kid with a mother who's gives him no love or attention at all).

He's into a lot of the realtime strategy games, and this should work well enough for now.

Thanks a ton for the info, you're gonna have made one kid very happy when I can delivery a built PC to him in a week or two!
Kudos to you for your kindness and compassion! Good combo deal, should work out well for him.
 
Thanks guys, but without the link from the original poster, I'd still be wondering how the hell I was gonna afford to do anything at all. For under $100 a I can complete a machine that will be good enough for a young troubled teen.

I'm figuring this would be enough horsepower to run some RTS games at 1024x768 for him. The only spare vid card I have thats AGP atm is my old 6800 Ultra which is overkill extreme for that setup, but will work.

Already got a case loaded with other parts waiting on the new guts to get put in.

This is a a really great deal for anyone I think.
 
wow, when you say old 6800 Ultra I think new still.. That was the most jaw dropping card i've owned since the TI 4600... cause before that it was GeForce 2, S3 Savage, and 2mb onboard videos with the 486 systems. LoL I wouldn't say it's overkill for the system. I would say it's perfect!
 
i would say just get it. i mean, 80 bux?? if it doesnt out do your p4 just sell it. i got the deal to swap out an old p3 500 system i had sitting around. only thing im gonna upgrade is a new psu and it should be golden.
 
I bought this awhile back when it was $90, right now, i swaped out the 3100 sempy for a 3000 athlon64 newcastle, and the system overclocks very very nice. On top of that, its running very stable. I have a single 1 gig Corsair Value Select stick running on it fine and dandy. Hell, even the corsair is 1:1 ratio with the cpu @ 3-3-3-8-1t 230fsb (i could go higher, but the ram doesnt give enough head room... it is value select after all)

I have the sempy in a MSI K8T Neo-FSR that doesn't like overclocking due to no agp/pci lock (which the Nforce3-A does have)

I can get my cpu (3000 athy) @ 240fsb very stable. Any higher, i need more voltage, and the board doesn't allow me to set anything higher than 5% (thats not a problem with the sempy though) :( hopefully ECS will have a bios fix for that.

Other than that, GREAT board for the money. The sempy i heard overclocks very very well (its a paris core) I haven't tried it though.

One thing to remember, USE THE DRIVERS ON THE CD, don't download them anywhere else, and just use the windows IDE driver. I had problems using nvidia, and ECS website drivers.
 
After reading others had got a 1G stick to work, I tried again. Bloody machine posted. Swapped in the second stick and it failed alone and by itself. Swapped the questionable stick with one of the other 1G sticks and the machine booted to 2G without problems. Not sure why the issue as I picked up all 4 1G sticks at the same time and they all memtested without issue. The same stick is now in my wife's Asrock board and running fine.

The GSkill also worked after I updated the BIOS. Go figure. Anyhow, now eating crow on the statement I made earlier. Seems it works with 1Gx16 chips after all - just not the stick I tested with...
 
I had a pair of Mushkin 512's I just got from an RMA and at first one of the sticks wouldn't even post but the other worked fine. Eventually after some messing around they both work now. Not sure what I did but it works now.
 
There are certain bios options that often render this system unstable, make sure to disable fast writes and sidebanding in the bios as it will greatly hinder overclocks and sometimes overall system stability.

This is from my own experience and several others in the hundreds of sempron/ecs posts i've read.

/Outpost must have a ton of these, every hot deal forum has this combo posted and it's still in stock.
 
SJetski71 said:
Outpost must have a ton of these, every hot deal forum has this combo posted and it's still in stock.

That is why I am a big Fry's fan. They usually have a big stock of good deals.
 
swetmore said:
That is why I am a big Fry's fan. They usually have a big stock of good deals.

I HATE Frys! I can't stand their rude customer service... when I needed help the group of guys were in a Huddle just BSing and when I asked for help to one guy he goes... "DOn't ask me, ask him"... point at another guy... which looks at me and blows me off... then when I did get some help they had no idea what a 2X5 USB connector was.. and saying they don't exist and it should come with the motherboards... LoL. So yeah, I am never going back.

They do however have a pretty great cafe' area in the center of the store where you can eat some good tuna sandwhiches w/ cute girls :)

Did I mention that the store was all marble or maybe its granite... they could have cut the cost on trying to look so flashy and make all their items cheap like costco style. LoL... Grrr...

Oh yeah, also it's like any electronics retail shop where you hear them preying on the customer that doesn't know much about pc's... it eats me up hearing someing getting taken advantage of to buy something crappy.

We should all get together and protest. Whadya Say!?? :mad:
 
heelix said:
Rosewill DDR 400 / 1024 (1Gx16) alone and in pairs. Also did some GSkill 1G (that were going for ~150 a pair not too long ago) chips as well - but it is back in the rack and I'm not pulling it out to look at the chips. (grin)
I had the exact same problem. A friend recently bought this combo, and the board will not work with Rosewill ram. Either stick (1G.) Sent the board back.
 
Time to make a second rig so when the G/F comes over I can teach her to play CS Source. She wants to learn!! :eek: :eek:
 
This is the perfect barebone. Decent board, Decent chipset, NF3, can always add a chea turion down the line, has AGP slot, lots of good cheapo AGP cards comming on the market. I have a 9500Pro waiting, a cheap 1GB kit, 160 ATA 7200RPM Drive. Now I need a cheap 15-17" LCD, got me a nice back-up/second machine :)
 
noobtech said:
I HATE Frys! I can't stand their rude customer service... when I needed help the group of guys were in a Huddle just BSing and when I asked for help to one guy he goes... "DOn't ask me, ask him"... point at another guy... which looks at me and blows me off... then when I did get some help they had no idea what a 2X5 USB connector was.. and saying they don't exist and it should come with the motherboards... LoL. So yeah, I am never going back.

They do however have a pretty great cafe' area in the center of the store where you can eat some good tuna sandwhiches w/ cute girls :)

Did I mention that the store was all marble or maybe its granite... they could have cut the cost on trying to look so flashy and make all their items cheap like costco style. LoL... Grrr...

Oh yeah, also it's like any electronics retail shop where you hear them preying on the customer that doesn't know much about pc's... it eats me up hearing someing getting taken advantage of to buy something crappy.

We should all get together and protest. Whadya Say!?? :mad:

silly rabbit, you never go to fry's to ask for what you need :p Fry's is a wonderful place if:

1) you're a geek, and understand computers.

2) you know what specific part you want.

the only thing i ask a salesperson at fry's is "where is _________ located?"

if that's not you then go to some service oreinted computer store, there are plenty of those around. The things i like about fry's is that:

1)they have good deals, and are cheap on many things. Not all, but many.

2)they have a huge stock of most items

3)the return policy is good.
 
Is the deal still live? When I add to cart, it just goes to the main index page. I view cart, and it errors out on me.
 
^^^

Just tried it with IE and it's working fine. They accept phone orders also btw: 1-877-OUTPOST .... or: 1-800-856-9800
 
SJetski71 said:
^^^

Just tried it with IE and it's working fine. They accept phone orders also btw: 1-877-OUTPOST .... or: 1-800-856-9800

I didnt think to try IE. I'm a firefox kinda guy (for better or for worse).

Thanks for the tip, yeah, I figured they would take phone orders, but I'm stuck at work right now :)

edit: Yes, it doesnt like my firefox at home or work for some reason. IE works great. Man, I love outpost deals, the shipping from ground to next-day is almost negligible.
 
topcat989 said:
silly rabbit, you never go to fry's to ask for what you need :p Fry's is a wonderful place if:

1) you're a geek, and understand computers.

2) you know what specific part you want.

the only thing i ask a salesperson at fry's is "where is _________ located?"

if that's not you then go to some service oreinted computer store, there are plenty of those around. The things i like about fry's is that:

1)they have good deals, and are cheap on many things. Not all, but many.

2)they have a huge stock of most items

3)the return policy is good.

Yeah and they have good Tuna and Cute Girls.
 
SJetski71 said:
There are certain bios options that often render this system unstable, make sure to disable fast writes and sidebanding in the bios as it will greatly hinder overclocks and sometimes overall system stability.

This is from my own experience and several others in the hundreds of sempron/ecs posts i've read.

I actually say leave these on until you actually have a problem, i never had to turn these off to overclock my cpu, or to have a stable system
 
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