Can the famous 550w AcBel...

[weirdlookinguy]

Run a P4 2.8? Or is that too light of a load?

I ask because I need a faster computer for my room than my 450Mhz Pentium 3. I thought it would be OK for music and light web browsing, but I was wrong. I used to have a P4 2.53 up in here but it was reassigned as the downstairs family computer a few months back, and my laptop and the P3 just aren't cutting it.

P4 2.8's show up on CL around here all the time for $65~$100. I figure if the motherboard isn't some ECS piece of shit and you popped it into a nice case with a 550w AcBel, it would make a decent computer for under $250. I have no need for a fancy new C2D.

EDIT: http://sandiego.craigslist.org/nsd/sys/1263155096.html
We're in the middle of emails right now, but he just confirmed he still has it. If the motherboard is not some cheap piece of shit, I'm probably gonna buy it.

[370forlife]

Re: Can the famous 550w AcBel...

Would run just fine.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Can the famous 550w AcBel...

Yup sounds like it would, I just wanna make sure since this is an older system. However it's a P4 and I know those era systems, just like today's systems, draw mostly from 12v so it should be fine.

I just got off the phone with the guy from Craigslist. He claims the board is an intel board. I asked him if it was or had ever been overclocked and he said no. I'm gonna go check it out tomorrow, if it's what he says it is then I'm buying it. It's a whole computer but all I want from it is the board and cpu.

Board+CPU=$65
GFX (Radeon 4650 AGP)=$87
Case=$90
PSU=$27

RAM, drives, and HDD's I have laying around. Total comes to $270 for a quality Pentium 4 box with a heavy duty, quality PSU and a case that could easily be reused for an i7 system should I want to do that sometime in the future.

Apparently, the 4650 can handle Left 4 Dead at a respectable 56FPS if you play at 1024x768, which is fine by me. I'm exited!

[370forlife]

Re: Can the famous 550w AcBel...

Does that have pci-e?

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Can the famous 550w AcBel...

Oh shit. It seems 945 has pci-e and SATA? I'm not sure about the board in question but if it does, then w00t!!! I thought a system that old would have AGP but intel 945 chipset boards seem to all have pci-e? I'll know for sure tomorrow. Anyone familiar with this chipset know?

EDIT: OK something might be up here. It seems 945 is a current chipset being used for C2D. Can anyone who knows more about chipsets confirm this? I'm not too familiar with what's out there.

[KeriJane]

Re: Can the famous 550w AcBel...

Hi weirdlookinguy

The Intel 945 chipset came in two types of boards:

Early, which supports NetBurst CPU only

Late, which supports C2Duo but not C2quad

I'm not sure if the difference is in the chipset itself or somewhere else on the board.

Have fun
Keri

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Can the famous 550w AcBel...

Huh. This must be the NetBurst then?

According to the Wikipedia, all three NetBurst variants of the 945 do DDR2, and two of the three have PCI-E x16. Looks like I will be able to stick gobs of dirt-cheap DDR2 in this puppy and also a video card that can handle modern games OK.

This is gonna be one hell of a score for $65 if it really is a 945, actually-intel-not-just-the-chipset board. I should be set for the next 4-5 years, methinks.

EDIT: Windows 7? Ohhh man, it's gonna be fun having a modern computer again.

[370forlife]

Re: Can the famous 550w AcBel...

There are p4's in lga775, so it might be able to do c2d's.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Can the famous 550w AcBel...

The AcBel shipped today from Hyper Micro, and my buddy and I are heading over to the guy's house later today to pick up the P4 2.8 complete system and a 17" LCD both together for $100. I might use it in my room to replace the half-dead 19" I currently have, or keep it as a spare.

My only worry is that the board won't have a PCI-E x16 slot, but even if it doesn't, it will be a huge upgrade from this nice but just too slow P3 450.

Man I love CL.

[370forlife]

Re: Can the famous 550w AcBel...

Ya I use to be able to sell p3 800mhz computers I got for free on there for $75 each to rubes.

The smarter ones will be able to talk you down because they actually know what a pentium 3 and 256mb of ram is.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Can the famous 550w AcBel...

I think I did good

I didn't take the monitor. Didn't like it. Also the system he was advertising was an 845, not a 945. I got lucky though, he had a ton of systems laying around and he showed me one that he'd let go of for only $10 more. It has:

-A 80GB Western Digital SATA drive, should make an excellent OS drive.
-Codegen 450W PSU. It gets the boot as soon as my shiny new AcBel arrives.
-LG CD-ROM drive. Eh.
-Foxconn fans. Definitely not the best, but not terrible, should hold me over a few months until I order some NMB-MATs.

The real treasure:
An Intel Desktop Board, full size ATX with 4 PCI, 2 PCI-E x2, and 1 PCI-E x16. All Japcaps. It has four SATA connectors, and... it takes DDR2!!!! I've got two sticks of 256 and two 1 gig sticks in there right now for a total of 2.5GB. Sitting in the CPU socket is a 2.8Ghz P4 with HT. Not too bad!

It's a last generation system but seriously, if a 2.53Ghz P4 with 1GB of RAM felt nice and snappy to me, a 2.8 HT with two and a half gigs of RAM should be just fine.

It's even got a clean install of XP SP3 on there. I happily gave the guy his $75 and left. Now I just need to buy a GFX card and a case. Thank God it has PCI-E x16, now I have a plethora of ~$100 cards to choose from that will run just fine in this system. Also DDR2!!! I won't have to scrounge around for sticks of DDR, which is getting increasingly difficult to find for a good price.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Can the famous 550w AcBel...

OK, chipset is i915G. The CPU is an 2.8Ghz HT-enabled Prescott with SSE3. 151W . Integrated graphics are intel GMA 900, which can do Aero under Vista.

What do you guys think? Was $75 a good price, or about what it was worth? The damn thing runs really fast. Responsive as hell.

This thing only had 512MB of RAM in it, but I stopped at Fry's and picked up 2GB on the way home. Damn DDR2 is cheap! According to everest, physical RAM utilization is at 15% with IE open.

[370forlife]

Re: Can the famous 550w AcBel...

So the comp you bought from him is a intel board with all japanese caps, pci-e 16x, 2 pci-e 2x, and 4 pci's, and a 2.8ghz p4 w/HT?

Thats a pretty good deal.

download cpu-z, and tell us what socket it is, or just post a screen shot of it.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Can the famous 550w AcBel...

Indeed. Full size ATX with all the expansion slots listed, and even the tiny caps are nichicon. Everything else is a mix of NCC, Rubycon, and a few yellow-sleeved Fujitsu polymers. The board's model number is Intel D915GEV. It has four dual-channel RAM slots, seems like a pretty badass mobo to me.

CPU is a socket 775.

Can't wait to pop Win7 on this thing and see how it does.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Can the famous 550w AcBel...

Have a problem here.

It took a few tries to get the computer to boot after sitting unplugged overnight (fans would spin but no POST or video), and I noticed that when you unplug the Codegen PSU from power, the little green LED on the motherboard that indicates power is applied starts blinking as if power was being applied and then cut off repeatedly. It does this for a good fifteen seconds before it finally stops. I hooked up an old 110W Ilssan PSU and I didn't try to boot the system with it, but when I unplugged it the green LED on the motherboard just turned off like it was supposed to instead of blinking like it did with the Codegen.

Speedfan indicated that the voltages were well within tolerance when using the Codegen.

Does this sound like a marginal PSU was the cause of the system not wanting to boot cold?

[momaka]

Re: Can the famous 550w AcBel...

From what I read here, Codegen PSs are just the typical generic gutless units. Of course best way to know is to open it up and post pictures here. Chances are, though, that you will need a new, better power supply. Good FSPs and Seasonics are around $30 on Newegg.

Nice deal by the way. But that P4 is HOT! 151 watts? You can bake bricks in that computer.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Can the famous 550w AcBel...

I have a very nice 550w AcBel already on the way to relieve the Codegen of its duties. I opened the Codegen and it is indeed a gutless wonder, with HEC caps.

I was just asking if a computer having trouble booting cold sounded more like a PSU problem or a potentially faulty motherboard. If it's most likely because of the Codegen, then it's no problem as I already have the tracking number on that AcBel . If it's the mobo though... But like I said, the Codegen makes the light on the motherboard blink when you pull the power plug. With a different PSU that I popped in there for testing, the light just simply went out after a few seconds like one would normally expect.

EDIT: Oh and no joke on the P4! IIRC, Prescott P4's were one of intel's last ditch attemps before they said fuck it and moved over to the core architecture.

[kc8adu]

Re: Can the famous 550w AcBel...

if its like the codegen units i have seen just toss it.
its a waste of space and electricity.

[370forlife]

Re: Can the famous 550w AcBel...

EDIT: Oh and no joke on the P4! IIRC, Prescott P4's were one of intel's last ditch attemps before they said fuck it and moved over to the core architecture.

Well, they tried one more time with the Cedar Mill, and it still wasen't as fast as comparable AMD's. They found that a Prescott had to run at 5.2ghz to keep up with a athlon fx-55 @ 2.6ghz.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Can the famous 550w AcBel...

Whoaaa...

This thing runs Windows 7 like a CHAMP! In fact, web browsing is snappier than in XP!

EDIT: Also, still running on the Codegen unfortunately.. Voltages are all within tolerance so I decided to go ahead and run my machine on it for a few more days until the new AcBel arrives.