PC Upgrade
Intro
What I really wanted to do was build a completely new system from scratch using AMD' 64 bit CPU's and stacks of RAM and goodies. and in particular I needed to replace the 19" CRT monitor that used to take up all the room on my desk and I had already agreed to sell to a colleague.
My girlfriend graciously agreed that the monitor could be swapped for a TFT flatscreen because, "It'd look better in the room". Which goes to show that she sees my hobby and work tool as an ornament that clutters up the house!
However she pointed out that as we're thinking of travelling next at the end of the year unless I took it with us I'd loose the benefit and waste money and as long as the TFT was less than £250 that would be OK in her book.
It's funny how girlfriends can only be logical when it comes to your money!
But I had to admit she was right in this instance. When buying bits for a computer I always tend to byte the bullet and buy the best upgrade that I can afford at the time, and then suffer as the monetary value of the kit dwindles each day thereafter. The thought of how much "bang/buck" I'd be missing whilst away was too much to bear
Don't get me wrong, it's not the cost of the kit per se that would bother me but the certain knowledge that when I got back I would be able to get a much faster system for the same cash, so I'd be better to wait before shelling out the hard-earned.
Though it'd be laudable to wait, I'm not that patient so decided instead of a completely new system I'd upgrade components to a best value for money option for now.
Requirements
I needed a new hard disk, the 40G disk I currently own is nearly full and rattles a bit now. Wont be long before it fails.
My 19" CRT monitor was great but takes up loads of room on my small desk and I fancy a change to a nice flat screen TFT and I've already sold it to force the issue ;-)
Wants
I wanted a new Graphics card. The GeForce 2MX that has been fine with my mainly text base use of Linux can do 3D hardware acceleration but very slowly, and is no use when it comes to running the Opensource flight simulator "Flightgear". Also it'd be good if it had DVI output to benefit the new TFT monitor.
If your gonna upgrade the GPU you may as well upgrade the CPU. Besides I was running an Athlon XP 1700 and my Asus A7v333 motherboard can easily take more than that
Actions taken
So off went the order.
Oops! here's what happens when you try to buy a new monitor!
£57.50+VAT x 1 - AMD Athlon "Barton" XP2800+ 333FSB (Socket A) CPU - OEM
£5.75+VAT x 1 - Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g)
£52.95+VAT x 1 - Samsung SpinPoint P SP1614N 160GB ATA-133 8MB Cache -
£244.00+VAT x 1 - Viewsonic VP171B-2 17" LCD Monitor - Black
£129.95+VAT x 1 - XFX GeForce 6600 GT 128MB DDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (AGP) - Retail
£5.50+VAT x 1 - Akasa Rounded Ultra ATA133/100/66 IDE Cable (0.9m) - Blue
£2.95+VAT x 2 - Akasa Rounded Ultra ATA133/100/66 IDE Cable (0.45m) - Blue
Sub-Total: £501.55
Shipping: £9.75
VAT: £89.48
Total: £600.78
The Kit Arrives
I Picked up my kit on Friday night and went to work on it at the weekend, but when I read the requirements for the graphics card it specified a minimum 450W power supply. My existing one was 200W !
So I bought a 650W supply from Maplin with 2 x 80mm fans and 1 x 120mm fan.
My case only didn't have any case fans, and I figured that with a more powerful GPU and CPU I'd need better air flow, so I got a Jeantek Phong (£39 inc. VAT ) from PC World (I would have bought a NZXT Nemesis but I couldn't be bothered to wait for the delivery) It has a front 120mm fan and a rear 120mm fan plus an 80mm side vent (with a wind tunnel if I want to add an 80mm fan for the GPU)
My old system had 2 fans. One loud bugger in the PSU and the 90mm fan on my CPU cooler (Zalman flower)
My new system has 7 fans! 2 80mm and a 120mm in the PSU and 2 x 120mm on the case and the 90mm on CPU and the fan on the graphics card! but due to the size of the fans it still sounds quieter than the old system!
Because the rear 120mm fan and the PSU 120mm fan are right next to the Zalman flower, I may experiment with removing the 90 mm fan from the flower and plugging rear fan into the CPU fan socket.
In the end I couldn't resist ordering more memory, so the only bits of my computer that are still the same are the motherboard, DVD drive and CD-writer and floppy disk.
So much for an invisible upgrade!
I had a few panics, putting it together.
I have the motherboard set to jumperless, which means that CPU frequencies and multipliers and voltages can be set from the BIOS. The motherboard detected that the CPU had changed so the bios asked me to specify the frequencies etc. I haven't flashed the BIOS for years and so the "auto" setting that should allow me to pick the correct set-up was no good. The fastest it went up to was 1800Mhz! So I had to specify the multiplier and frequency, but stupidly I'd not looked up the
actual frequency that the Barton core Athlon XP 2800 ran at, so I thought I'd set it low, (same as previous chip Athon XP 1700) and let it boot then look it up online.
But when I started it up the Promise RAID controller was telling me that I'd got the wrong IRQ's and refused to boot! I didn't work out for ages that when I removed all the disks from the motherboard, so I could move it into the new case, I'd originally had the main Drive on the promise controller in a single disk raid array, but after moving I put the disk on
the primary IDE, ironically to reduce boot problems!
Obviously the raid controller was confused when there was no disk. So I disabled RAID and it booted up.
The screen resolution will need editing and possibly some options to Nvidia driver to get the most from
my new much bigger card. but I wanted to do a quick frame rate test just to see the improvement.
I kicked off "glxgears" (cause I'm in Linux not windoze) which is a program that shows three gears
in 3D (glide library) driving each other and outputs the frame rate. It showed aprox 5000 fps.
This may seem a lot but the view window is actually quite small (unless you maximise it) so doesn't take much effort. However I was a bit disappointed as my old card could achieve that, admittedly only when you covered the view so that it didn't actually have to render anything!
I moved the mouse and the whole PC powered off. Not a nice shutdown but a full power-cut! I figured that I'd best go to bed before I tinkered any more. When I woke up this morning and actually read the installation guide for the card, I realised my mistake. the card requires 12V power and has a connector for the PSU to plug into. I'd just left it in standard VGA mode drawing power from the AGP slot, and not plugged into the PSU.
No wonder when it tried to draw 12V from the motherboard, she just shut down to protect herself!
Looked good this morning. no tweaks yet but managed 7300 fps on the small window glxgears and manages to make Flightgear run smoothly
Can't wait to see what it'll be like after I crank it all up and turn the fans up to full power!
What I really wanted to do was build a completely new system from scratch using AMD' 64 bit CPU's and stacks of RAM and goodies. and in particular I needed to replace the 19" CRT monitor that used to take up all the room on my desk and I had already agreed to sell to a colleague.
My girlfriend graciously agreed that the monitor could be swapped for a TFT flatscreen because, "It'd look better in the room". Which goes to show that she sees my hobby and work tool as an ornament that clutters up the house!
However she pointed out that as we're thinking of travelling next at the end of the year unless I took it with us I'd loose the benefit and waste money and as long as the TFT was less than £250 that would be OK in her book.
It's funny how girlfriends can only be logical when it comes to your money!
But I had to admit she was right in this instance. When buying bits for a computer I always tend to byte the bullet and buy the best upgrade that I can afford at the time, and then suffer as the monetary value of the kit dwindles each day thereafter. The thought of how much "bang/buck" I'd be missing whilst away was too much to bear
Don't get me wrong, it's not the cost of the kit per se that would bother me but the certain knowledge that when I got back I would be able to get a much faster system for the same cash, so I'd be better to wait before shelling out the hard-earned.
Though it'd be laudable to wait, I'm not that patient so decided instead of a completely new system I'd upgrade components to a best value for money option for now.
Requirements
I needed a new hard disk, the 40G disk I currently own is nearly full and rattles a bit now. Wont be long before it fails.
My 19" CRT monitor was great but takes up loads of room on my small desk and I fancy a change to a nice flat screen TFT and I've already sold it to force the issue ;-)
Wants
I wanted a new Graphics card. The GeForce 2MX that has been fine with my mainly text base use of Linux can do 3D hardware acceleration but very slowly, and is no use when it comes to running the Opensource flight simulator "Flightgear". Also it'd be good if it had DVI output to benefit the new TFT monitor.
If your gonna upgrade the GPU you may as well upgrade the CPU. Besides I was running an Athlon XP 1700 and my Asus A7v333 motherboard can easily take more than that
Actions taken
So off went the order.
Oops! here's what happens when you try to buy a new monitor!
£57.50+VAT x 1 - AMD Athlon "Barton" XP2800+ 333FSB (Socket A) CPU - OEM
£5.75+VAT x 1 - Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g)
£52.95+VAT x 1 - Samsung SpinPoint P SP1614N 160GB ATA-133 8MB Cache -
£244.00+VAT x 1 - Viewsonic VP171B-2 17" LCD Monitor - Black
£129.95+VAT x 1 - XFX GeForce 6600 GT 128MB DDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (AGP) - Retail
£5.50+VAT x 1 - Akasa Rounded Ultra ATA133/100/66 IDE Cable (0.9m) - Blue
£2.95+VAT x 2 - Akasa Rounded Ultra ATA133/100/66 IDE Cable (0.45m) - Blue
Sub-Total: £501.55
Shipping: £9.75
VAT: £89.48
Total: £600.78
The Kit Arrives
I Picked up my kit on Friday night and went to work on it at the weekend, but when I read the requirements for the graphics card it specified a minimum 450W power supply. My existing one was 200W !
So I bought a 650W supply from Maplin with 2 x 80mm fans and 1 x 120mm fan.
My case only didn't have any case fans, and I figured that with a more powerful GPU and CPU I'd need better air flow, so I got a Jeantek Phong (£39 inc. VAT ) from PC World (I would have bought a NZXT Nemesis but I couldn't be bothered to wait for the delivery) It has a front 120mm fan and a rear 120mm fan plus an 80mm side vent (with a wind tunnel if I want to add an 80mm fan for the GPU)
My old system had 2 fans. One loud bugger in the PSU and the 90mm fan on my CPU cooler (Zalman flower)
My new system has 7 fans! 2 80mm and a 120mm in the PSU and 2 x 120mm on the case and the 90mm on CPU and the fan on the graphics card! but due to the size of the fans it still sounds quieter than the old system!
Because the rear 120mm fan and the PSU 120mm fan are right next to the Zalman flower, I may experiment with removing the 90 mm fan from the flower and plugging rear fan into the CPU fan socket.
In the end I couldn't resist ordering more memory, so the only bits of my computer that are still the same are the motherboard, DVD drive and CD-writer and floppy disk.
So much for an invisible upgrade!
I had a few panics, putting it together.
I have the motherboard set to jumperless, which means that CPU frequencies and multipliers and voltages can be set from the BIOS. The motherboard detected that the CPU had changed so the bios asked me to specify the frequencies etc. I haven't flashed the BIOS for years and so the "auto" setting that should allow me to pick the correct set-up was no good. The fastest it went up to was 1800Mhz! So I had to specify the multiplier and frequency, but stupidly I'd not looked up the
actual frequency that the Barton core Athlon XP 2800 ran at, so I thought I'd set it low, (same as previous chip Athon XP 1700) and let it boot then look it up online.
But when I started it up the Promise RAID controller was telling me that I'd got the wrong IRQ's and refused to boot! I didn't work out for ages that when I removed all the disks from the motherboard, so I could move it into the new case, I'd originally had the main Drive on the promise controller in a single disk raid array, but after moving I put the disk on
the primary IDE, ironically to reduce boot problems!
Obviously the raid controller was confused when there was no disk. So I disabled RAID and it booted up.
The screen resolution will need editing and possibly some options to Nvidia driver to get the most from
my new much bigger card. but I wanted to do a quick frame rate test just to see the improvement.
I kicked off "glxgears" (cause I'm in Linux not windoze) which is a program that shows three gears
in 3D (glide library) driving each other and outputs the frame rate. It showed aprox 5000 fps.
This may seem a lot but the view window is actually quite small (unless you maximise it) so doesn't take much effort. However I was a bit disappointed as my old card could achieve that, admittedly only when you covered the view so that it didn't actually have to render anything!
I moved the mouse and the whole PC powered off. Not a nice shutdown but a full power-cut! I figured that I'd best go to bed before I tinkered any more. When I woke up this morning and actually read the installation guide for the card, I realised my mistake. the card requires 12V power and has a connector for the PSU to plug into. I'd just left it in standard VGA mode drawing power from the AGP slot, and not plugged into the PSU.
No wonder when it tried to draw 12V from the motherboard, she just shut down to protect herself!
Looked good this morning. no tweaks yet but managed 7300 fps on the small window glxgears and manages to make Flightgear run smoothly
Can't wait to see what it'll be like after I crank it all up and turn the fans up to full power!
posted by Karl at
3:22 AM
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