Cool It ???

[whirling1]

Well I'm due to be made redundant and what shall i spend my redundancy on?? Upgrading my Pc of course.

Ok im thinking of going for either a Athlon XP 2400 or 2600(333)..depending on my budget...one of the nice new Nforce 2 boards ( thinking of either the a-bit or the leadtek one ..any issues there???)..Also going to get at least 512mb Pc2700 (probably crucial).....

My question is this what heatsink can cope with this proc?? was thinking of the SLK-800 with a YS-Tech fan.....nowhere seems to list what procs heatsinks can cope with..so any help would be nice....also any suggestions on a nice case ..needs to have or be easily fittable(yes i know thats not a word) with good cooling as my pc room..err cupboard ..eerrr hole is rather small and gets warm.case also needs to be less than £80 as the more i spend on this the less i have for other bits......also are the maxtor 7200rpm 8mb cache drives any good? ( maxtor diamond jobbies )got a old maxtor 10gb ..and has been a good old drive , wish i could say the same for my IBM ericson 60gb 2mb cache jobby.

thanks in advance guys

 

[Testin da Cable]

for your cpu I'd say get a big zalman flower. I have one on my 2200+ and it cools very very well and iirc is rated all the way up to 2800+ but you should check that really. and it's silent, specially when compared to the other big coolers. noise is bad mmmmkay.

 

[whirling1]

any particular model of zalman flower??

 

[Testin da Cable]

I have this one. it's rated up to a 2600+ I read. I'm dead chuffed with it both temp and noise-wise. I used to have a dragonORB-III with a 7000RPM fan that sounded like a jet engine and didn't even keep the temp down like the zalman does. I'm a total zalman convert since then I kid you not.

 

[whirling1]

Is there much of a performance boost to the XP2600 (333fsb) as opposed to the XP2400(266) that warrants the extra 100 squidleys?

And are all the Nforce2 boards ( abit, asus, msi, leadtek) all of a similair standard or is there a reason to go with a particular make?

 

[Testin da Cable]

well it is extra bandwidth. your friends will brag about it, the hardware sites will rave about it. embattle, bodhi and xavier will argue about it.
will you notice it? no. tbh I really dont think so. that's just my opinion though heheh

 

[Will]

Heh, well summed up. Just to jump on the controversy bandwagon, I don't think you'd notice much difference between an XP2000+ and the XP2600+.

 

[whirling1]

Originally posted by Will.
Heh, well summed up. Just to jump on the controversy bandwagon, I don't think you'd notice much difference between an XP2000+ and the XP2600+.

Really?? so would I be better off with slower proc (XP2200) and 1gig of Pc2700 ???

Or what about the P4 2.4 ...

 

[Will]

The P4 is a fair price jump. At the moment I'm building systems for a couple of people, and I think the XP2000+ is at the sweet price point just now. Though I just run down the pricelists looking for where the price starts to make a bigger jump.

Then again, 1gig of RAM is excessive unless you have a good reason for it. Spend the spare cash getting better rather than more. CAS2 RAM (Corsair is very good) gives a nice little speed boost.

As for the 8mb cache HDD, you will notice the speed increase. I have the 80GB version (on special offer at OCUK)

For your case, with your budget, you seem to want one that works rather than one that looks pretty. The Globalwin 80 or Chieftech Dragon seem to be the popular choices there.

 

[Embattle]

Originally posted by whirling1
Is there much of a performance boost to the XP2600 (333fsb) as opposed to the XP2400(266) that warrants the extra 100 squidleys?

And are all the Nforce2 boards ( abit, asus, msi, leadtek) all of a similair standard or is there a reason to go with a particular make?

Most of them are the same with a couple of different versions of each board, such as ones with Serial-ATA, onboard sound etc.

Anything above 512MB RAM is just a right to brag and of little benefit.


Not great performance diff between XP 2400+ and 2600+ although if you get the right memory etc then you'll improve your benchmarks, although real world performance won't change much.

What about GFX card?

 

[whirling1]

I already have a GF4 ti4200 128mb ..so not buying new card.

Also just out of interest just been to Asus site to look for updates for my current mobo (asus A7V133) , and they now have a bios flash to support XP2200... would i see any difference fitting one into my machine??

current setup is Athlon 1400, 1GB sdram (it was free) GF4200ti..soundblaster live.

I still want to upgrade properly , but could get chip now and rest later....is there any point do you reckon?