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New Mobo Size


Springheel

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Well, I'm finally down to replacing my Mobo as a way to fix my longstanding computer problem. Unfortunately I've been having a hard time finding something that will support all my other components (775 socket, pata drives, AGP video card). I've managed to find one that is supposed to be good, but it's listed as Micro-ATX Size, 244mm*244mm.

 

Anyone know if this would fit in a standard ATX case?

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These days that isn't a problem - most Micro ATX boards have so much integrated into them already that you would be unlikely to use any of the extra PCI slots. And if you shop around you will have no trouble finding one that will take 4 RAM sticks, as well as having onboard LAN, SATA etc.

 

The Micro ATX form factor is just the same as ATX, just cut down after the fourth PCI slot - all the mounting holes. backplane and PCI slots will line up just fine, just use blanking plates on the last three PCI slots on the case.

 

Micro ATX has some advantages - it is smaller, and so will fit into a smaller case (though a normal ATX case is fine), uses a bit less power, and are usually cheaper than full ATX cases. If you are not likely to fill up all the available slots on a full ATX board, you might as well save a few bucks and go with a Micro ATX mobo.

 

If you find your current case is taking up too much space, or you want to take your rig to LAN parties, a Micro ATX case and mobo is the way to go. The Aspire X-QPack is a good Micro ATX case, as is the Antec Aria, though the smaller cases do require more atttention to airflow and cooling, especially with a High end P4 + decent graphics card.

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Thanks for the info guys. One other question: at the moment I have two pata HDs. I'd like to keep one or both of them if possible. The new mobo looks like it supports both pata and sata HDs...is it possible to boot from a serial HD and still access normal ide HDs?

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Thanks for the info guys.  One other question:  at the moment I have two pata HDs.  I'd like to keep one or both of them if possible.  The new mobo looks like it supports both pata and sata HDs...is it possible to boot from a serial HD and still access normal ide HDs?

 

Yeah, that shouldn't be a problem Spring. You might need to make a change in your bios but aside from that, they should run side by side without issue.

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You can boot from Serial ATA just fine, but installing Windows XP will require you have a floppy with the SATA controller drivers at hand. No idea why, but for some reason XP still forces you to use an obsolete bit of hardware for installing to SATA... Some Linux distros I have played with recently had problems with my SATA drive, and would hang unless I disabled it. But newer mobos should work better. Go for one with an Intel or nVidia SATA controller, because they support ATAPI devices, so you can use SATA optical drives when they come out. Get rid of those chunky PATA cables!

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I've run into that problem before. What a pain in the ass. I don't even HAVE a floppy drive.

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There is a way around it though - you can go to http://www.nliteos.com/

and build a custom Windows installation CD that will automatically install and configure Windows to precisely your specifications, and it will automatically have any drivers you need preloaded, including SATA so you don't need a floppy. Takes a bit of work to build your new installation disc, but it is worth it if you have to reinstall windows... You can even set it up so you don't need to do ANYTHING - you just click install, it does it all, even enters your windows serial key for you.

 

Floppys are so outdated, I don't know why the mobo manufacturers still put the floppy headers on boards... What a waste.

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Hmm, probably easier just to buy a floppy and stick it in. They're only $10 or something these days.

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Ok, I've got all my equipment and hopefully can put these problems behind me tomorrow (fingers crossed). One (hopefully) last question: how important is it to add thermal grease to a cpu when you're moving it from one mobo to another? The instructions I've got say you should add some, but that's going to add some time to the whole procedure tomorrow, since I don't have any and I'm not entirely sure where I'd go to get some around here. Is it a major thing, or one of those over-the-top precautions that manuals include, like wearing a grounding bracelet while working?

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Is it a major thing, or one of those over-the-top precautions that manuals include, like wearing a grounding bracelet while working?

 

:laugh: Spring, don't give me a heart attack. Yeah, you really should put the thermal paste on there. Just an extremely thin amount. Too much and you won't make proper contact with the heat sink. It really helps to transfer heat off the cpu onto the heatsink. Will save you a lot of pain if your CPU runs hot.

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Ok, I've got all my equipment and hopefully can put these problems behind me tomorrow (fingers crossed).  One (hopefully) last question:  how important is it to add thermal grease to a cpu when you're moving it from one mobo to another?  The instructions I've got say you should add some, but that's going to add some time to the whole procedure tomorrow, since I don't have any and I'm not entirely sure where I'd go to get some around here.  Is it a major thing, or one of those over-the-top precautions that manuals include, like wearing a grounding bracelet while working?

 

Ideally, you should clean the heat sink and the CPU die surfaces with iso-propyl alcohol before applying thermal grease - once you re-expose it to air by separating the HSF from the CPU after it has been running for a while, the grease will lose a lot of it's effectiveness.

 

If you don't clean and reapply thermal grease, your CPU will dissipate heat to the HSF less efficiently, and will probably run several degrees hotter, but it won't be a disaster or anything.

 

I just popped a new Zalman CNPS 7000 on my P4 yesterday, works a treat. Major shock when I removed the old Intel HSF - the CPU had fused to it, and it came out with the HSF! I thought I had screwed it big time, and some of the pins on the CPU were bent when I managed to pry it off the HSF. Took me a while to straighten them, and after I had it cleaned up and reinstalled, all was good. Shows how resilient the buggers are...

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I just popped a new Zalman CNPS 7000 on my P4 yesterday, works a treat.  Major shock when I removed the old Intel HSF - the CPU had fused to it, and it came out with the HSF!  I thought I had screwed it big time, and some of the pins on the CPU were bent when I managed to pry it off the HSF.  Took me a while to straighten them, and after I had it cleaned up and reinstalled, all was good.  Shows how resilient the buggers are...

 

Wow, I'm surprised that it didn't rip the CPU apart. That IS resilient. LOL

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I must've forgotten to remove the thin plastic film on the thermal tape supplied with the Intel HSF - no wonder it ran inexplicably hot for a while, and the CPU was stuck to the HSF. I don't know if I was more shocked when it came out with the HSF stuck to it, or when I put it back together with the Zalman and it worked... I thought I was gonna have to go shopping for a new CPU for sure...

 

That true - AMDs are more fragile, although the AMD 64s have now started copying Intels design of a metal shroud on the die to protect it. Personally, at the moment I would get a Pentium M over a P4 or an AMD 64, because they have better performance per GHz than P4s and AMD 64s, and although socket 479 motherboards are rare and expensive, the payoff in terms of lower power consumption, lower heat output and less noise from cooling fans are worth it for me. I am not amused by the runaway thermals and ludicrous power requirements of modern "performance" CPUs - IMO it is a silly waste of electricity, as no applications apart from 3D games an a few other CPU intesive things require that much power...

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  • 2 weeks later...

Knock on wood, but it seems to be ok. It looks like the problem was probably the old HDs after all, because when I tried to carry one over to the new system, the whole system refused to boot up most of the time. Take it out and everything would work smoothly. Yet I tested my old system without that bad HD in it, and I had the same problem. I can only assume both HDs went bad at the same time in a way that caused the same symptoms. Weird.

 

Anyway, things seem to be back to normal now.

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All the benchmarks done on the Pentium M so far have shown it to be superior to all but the fastest AMD 64s for laying games like Doom 3, in spite of the fact that it doesn't support hyperthreading or SSE3 and the Pentium M chipsets currently don't support very high memory bandwidth (there is an Aopen Pentium M MB that supports dual channel DDR2, but it can't use it at full DDR2 bandwidth). It comes down to being a very efficient chipset, compared to the P4, which is horribly inefficient - it is basically a glorified heater, and the AMD 64 is not much better in terms of heat output and power consumption. The best gaming CPU at the moment is the Pentium M 2.1 GHZ Dothan, and you can safely overclock it by 300 MHz or so with a negligible increase in thermal output. It can also be passively cooled with a decent heatsink, even when overclocked, and therefore makes for a quieter computer. I've been to LAN parties where people had overclocked P4s that sounded like a Boeing 747 taking off with all the fans... The Pentium M does run into some problems in some areas - if you multitask a lot or run software like Maya or Lightwave, you will be better off with a P4 or AMD 64, but for games, the Pentium M is king.

 

Apparently, the next Generation of Intel CPUs will all draw around 20 - 25 watts of power (same as PM, compared to 100 - 120 at present for P4s), will be dual or quad core and probably based on the Pentium M (which is essentially a Pentium 3). Also watch the AMD Turion 64 (AMDs answer to the Pentium M - mobile CPU with low power consumption AND high performance)...

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Hey here is what my brother had to say;

I was wondering why 300w, 430w and 500w power supplies even existed.  Pentium M? As in the mobile edition?  They're only up to 2.1Ghz - they may have better performance per gigahertz, but to match a 3.8?  The Pentium M 2.1Ghz is $759, The P4 s775 3.6Ghz is $649, the 3.8 $949, those are the 2MB cached versions (most expensive ones).

 

Well, I can see the power consumption paying off in the long run - but how can there be a long run if they're so slow...

 

What do you think?

 

I'm showing him your recent post.

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The Pentium M is not cheap by any means, and they can't match the performance of high end P4s or AMD 64s in all areas, but Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Far Cry and UT2K4 all run significantly faster on a 2.1 GHz Pentium M than they do on a 3.8 GHz P4 (all other things being roughly equal), and are only marginally slower than a top of the range dual core AMD 64 FX. This is because, as I understand it, none of these games actually make use of any of the advanced architectural features of P4s, and the Pentium M has 12 stages per clock cycle, while P4s have about 30+ I think. The AMD 64s are quite a bit more powerful than P4s running a GHz faster, because again, they have a more efficiient architecture. P4 Prescots will flog a PM when it comes to encoding mp3s or mpegs, or running several applications at once, or doing very certain CPU intensive things, but when it comes to games...

 

If you are on a budget, get an AMD 64, because the PM will take a big chunk out of your bank balance, but if power consumption, heat management and noise are issues for you, and you mainly play games, then the Pentium M should be your first choice, AMD 64 second, P4 only if you want to heat up your room. You can run a Pentium M and a GeForce 6800 GT with a 200 W power supply and have plenty of juice to spare, but you need upwards of 400 W for a P4 or AMD. And being able to cool a PM passively means less noisy cooling fans are needed.

 

The thing about the Pentium 4 is that while Intel has made a big deal of ever increasing clock speeds (in the past, I think they are finally over it now), actual performance has not improved much.. a 4 GHz P4 is not much more powerful than a 2 GHz P4, because P4s are very inefficient and mostly turn that extra clock speed into heat, rather than performance. For that reason I have chosen not to upgrade my current P4 2.6GHz, as I would gain very little performance increase by doing so - not worth the cash for that (adding more RAM will give me a bigger performance boost), and a faster processor would mean more fans and more noise.

 

Pentium 4s might have fast clock speeds, but clock speed does not necessarily make for faster performance...

 

The reason why low power processors will take off in the long run is two fold:

 

Big companies want to cut down on their electricity bills, and running a several 40 W workstations 24/7/365 is going to make a huge energy saving over several 400 W workstations.

 

Second, a lot of hardcore computer game enthusiasts are getting sick of bulky cases, noisy fans etc, and would like a small, lean, quiet, but powerful machine to take to LAN parties. These days, motherboards are so feature rich that you don't need many PCI slots, hard drives are huge, so you don't need many - why have a hulking great ATX case when you can fit the thing into a small portable box? The only reason is that P4s and AMDs generate so much heat at present that they tend to cook themselves in small enclosures...

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Hm, so if you were to cool down the P4 it would run faster instead of turning all the extra cycles into heat? No wonder those people you mentioned have computers that sound like boeings.

 

I think I might be getting one of those LAN party style mini cases when I upgrade in the future.

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People go to insane lengths, like using expensive, elaborate liquid cooling systems, Peltiers, immersing the motherboard in a dielectric liquid coolant, all to squeeze a few hundred extra megahertz out of a P4, which might translate to 1-2 FPS in Doom 3 in terms of real world difference. Pentium 4s consume lots of power at idle (over 60W), while a Pentium M at idle will consume only 3W! They dynamically adjust their clock speed depending on what you throw at it. This sort of thing is entirely necessary for laptops - laptops using desktop P 4s get at most 2 hrs battery life at idle; play Doom 3 on it and the batteries will die in 15 minutes. A few mobo manufacturers are starting to bring out motherboards for the socket 479 Pentium M, the best one is the Aopen i915GM, and Asus has an adaptor that lets you use a socket 479 in a 478 mobo (requres Asus mobo with BIOS update though)

 

Faster clock speeds usually mean more heat. The better you cool a CPU, the faster you can run it without it burning up - a 3.8 GHz Pentium 4 can produce over 100 degrees Celcius when running at full use, while a Pentium M produces about 40 degrees C.

 

You can run a Pentium M with very minimal cooling, if you employ the sort of cooling used for Pentium 4s you can overclock them considerably. Personally, I am more inclined to underclock a CPU to make it quieter than to overclock it, but that is just me. I value efficiency and silence over raw performance.

 

I guess the best analogy is that the Pentium 4 is like a gas guzzling V8 Chevrolet pickup truck, while the Pentium M is like a finely tuned Suzuki GSXR 1000 motorcycle - the V8 might have more power overall, but the motorcycle is more efficient, economical, and can get you to most places the V8 can faster because of it's power to weight ratio. Sometimes you might need the carrying capacity of the truck, but if you don't, it is a waste of petrol. There are some situations where the mobile Pentium just won't cut it, but for most uses it is really quite overpowered, and it is a gaming beast...

 

 

Here is an article discussing changes to Intel's direction vis a vis processors:

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/business/20050902/index.html

Edited by obscurus
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Yeah, I'm waiting a while before I make any significant upgrades too, though I'm thinking of making a little VIA mini ITX Linux 'puter for general stuff with some of the spare hard drives and bits and pieces I have lying around...

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