My new tower fleet

[Spacedye69]

Re: My new tower fleet

It's a 1.05. I never updated the bios. I ran it with a 1 ghz. Sorry about the fan. It was spinning when I tested it before I packed it up. But then again, it is old.

[paul_h]

Re: My new tower fleet

Yeah these mobos only supported tbirds up to 1.4Ghz I think.
Palominos needed a BIOS update and a couple of tweaks.
You've got it easy, as it's a 1.05. (dot after the '5'), that's apparently the easy version to get working with a palomino. I had the 1.05 (no dot after the '5'), which required a lot of playing about with the chipset and CPU volts to get working.

Back in the day I learnt everything from http://www.a7vtroubleshooting.com/ which still seems to be up.

edit: Site is up, but forums are down. The site is mainly about the 100mHz FSB a7v, but there was a lot of info in the forums when dealing with the a7v133 which got me through back then.
Nevermind, the gist of it is on this page http://www.a7vtroubleshooting.com/info/cpu/index.htm, and as I said, the 1.05(dot) should just need the latest BIOS to run a palomino or 133FSB thoroughbred.

[ratdude747]

Re: My new tower fleet

there is no dot after the five. it started but then locked up when it was time to boot a drive (binking " - " of doom)

so can i run a palomino? or am i stuck a 1ghz? i will update the bios (edited win98 iso + installer+ 1009 bios file)

as it is now, it will boot a cd, but will not do grub (grub rescue out of disk error)

[ratdude747]

Re: My new tower fleet

well...

the bios update fixed it. it boots anything, and it runs with the 1800+ no problem. i swapped coolers, my cpu temp is 55C. is that bad?

[c_hegge]

Re: My new tower fleet

well...

the bios update fixed it. it boots anything, and it runs with the 1800+ no problem. i swapped coolers, my cpu temp is 55C. is that bad?

It's fairly normal. My last Skt. A CPU ran at 60*C idle and 80*C under load, although that was partly due to the poor ventilation on the case.

[ratdude747]

Re: My new tower fleet

well... this b!tch has crappy ventilation too.

[paul_h]

Re: My new tower fleet

Normal temp for a palomino. They run pretty hot and anything below 50C is very good, only acheivable with a large aftermarket cooler and good ventilation.
But as long as its below 65C when loaded it's OK.
My 2800+ runs about 62C loaded, 52C idle

[ratdude747]

Re: My new tower fleet

posting from it now, not too bad.

only bug is the 2 case fans (one foxconn, Elan Vital) are way too noisy. they move a LOT of air though. i might visit hypermicro and swipe 2 more vantec stealth 2 ball bearing fans @ $3 a piece. that would silence it. thank god for the radio.

edit- with the better, larger heatsink (same fan), i just recorded 49c as a cputemp. due to lm-sensors not working, i had to reboot it real quick and use BIOS. it rebooted fast (1min max), so for a subcompact case, it cools well.

yay for me?

[ratdude747]

Re: My new tower fleet

spacedye69, don't worry, it spun, just not very well. thanks to my robotics team getting 8 replacement victor (one of the 2 legal speed controllers) fans in each years kit of parts, and us onlyneeding one every few years, they gave me 8, i broke a couple, but still had some leftover. how i have used them:

1. cooler for an nvidia geforce 5200 fx agp card
2. cooler for the northbridge of a sm pdsge, mounted to the heatsink out of a dell dimension 2400.
3. cooler for the board above- i had to hack down the mouts so it would fit, i cut down the 2 too much so i had to use little springs to make the old screws fit.

the pros; it is a ball bearing papst fan- as thick as a case fan more or less.

the con: no tach. wire (like i give a ____!)

[ratdude747]

Re: My new tower fleet

Pics of the updates/upgrades of tower 2:



the model of the mobo.



a better power supply. it has better bottom vents and bigger, extruded heatsinks. 250w.



the new fan, custom hacked down to fit the heatsink. ball bearing, moves a lot of air.



the new, bigger heatsink. fan flipped to blow towards psu. my temps are around 50C. athlon xp palomino 1800+.

[momaka]

Re: My new tower fleet

50C is pretty good, considering how close that heatsink is to the PSU and that the CPU is rated at 60 watt TPD. It's a good thing you flipped the fan around.

Not sure if I told you this, but I have a case that is almost exactly the same as your tower #2 (probably the same manufacturer too, as there are the same EE stamps on the bottom of the case) with the PSU on the side like that. I used to have a motherboard with a 1.4GHz Duron (45w) CPU with a big cooler and it still ran at 50C under load. Heatsink was only a few mm from the PSU, just like yours. No vent near the hard drives either, so they always ran hot.
I'm so glad I found a different case for that computer. Now that Duron never runs over 40C. I still have this crappy case though and I'm only keeping it because I have a spare motherboard and no anti-static bag to put it into . I don't think I'll ever use this case for a computer build again. Or if I do, it won't be anything better than a PII.
Come to think of it, the first computer that was actually built into that case was a PII 400MHz way back in '99 .

The HiPro PSU is very nice by the way. If I remember correctly, the caps for the 3.3/5/12v are all 12.5mm 3300uF Teapos. Heatsinks are very big, too. Good choice there.

[c_hegge]

Re: My new tower fleet

I have some similar 300W Hipro PSUs. They look very good. The heatsinks are nice and chunky and the parts are all well-sized. The Cheapo Teapo caps were vented though, so I replaced them with Panny FC.

[ratdude747]

Re: My new tower fleet

the hipro is a beast, and it has vents exactly in the best spot for cpu cooling. thats why i picked it. trust me, the dell p4 units they made are beasts too.

since the cooler blows into the vents, it cools just about as well as an open case. that is large Tai Sol cooler, with a FONSAN (delta made) fan.

[ratdude747]

Re: My new tower fleet

Tower #1 just got a major upgrade! my asus A8n32-SLI runs after all, and i swapped if fot the super micro board, which will go into a future tower#5 perhaps...

new specs: (for what has changed)

ASUS A8N32-SLI:
socket 939
10 usb (4 in back, 6 on headers)
2 firewire via headers
8 channel sound with digital coax and optical
6 SATA (1 eSATA, 5 internal, goofy raid config)
2 PATA
Floppy
SLI enabled
2x 10/100/1000
serial on header
gameport MIDI on header
2x pci-e 16x, 1x pci-e 1x, 3x PCI
nice heatpiped nb/sb/VRM cooler

AMD athlon64 x2 3800

stock cooler

90mm undervolted (resistor) fan, i will replace with a better non-pwm that has no resistor if this one fails.

nice?

[c_hegge]

Re: My new tower fleet

nice?

Sure is

[ratdude747]

Re: My new tower fleet

i found an extra xp pro dell COA, so i will dual-boot this sucka!

[ratdude747]

Re: My new tower fleet

cpu-z on the the new gaming tower: