[conspire] How to check if a mobo is compatible with

[David Fox]

On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 6:04 AM, K Sandoval <indigo.kai at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hiya Everyone, Kai here.

wow you're up early :)

>  Item 1) Do I need to purchase some CPU/Heat sink Jelly? Yes / No  ?
>   I don't have any that I know of.
>  Arctic Silver AS5-35 Silver Thermal Compound
>  http://www.centralcomputers.com/commerce/ccp19974--arctic-silver-as5-35-silver-thermal-compound-fan-as5-3g-cpuzzzasas5r.htm

It's probably a good idea, but might be a mess to put on. I've never
tried it. With today's fast CPUs, and their tendency to run hot, $7.95
seems to be an insignificant investment if you can prolong CPU life.
CPUs tend to do rather strange things when overheated :(.

AMD cpus (mine's a Thunderbird) tend to run especially hot; I imagine
these others would run hotter because of increased clock speed.
Anyway, it can't hurt.


>
>
>  Item #2) I am thinking of getting one GB of RAM for my dad's replacement system.
>  I think this RAM is compatible, but I thought I should stop and ask
>  someone just to make sure.
>
>  Option 1)
>  pqi POWER Series 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 533 (PC2 4200) Desktop Memory
>  http://www.pqi.com.tw/product2.asp?TT=1&cate1=61&PROID=98#1
>  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820141190
>  $17.00

Doesn't seem to be the wrong choice - it'll be compatible. pqi (to me)
is of unknown quality. Wonder what other people on the list think.
Meanwhile, there is memory from Crucial (which tends to have a
stronger reputation) and it's not that much more expensive. The link
is for 667/800 mhz DRAM so if that will work, the MB only supports
533, so it won't run at it's rated speed - but it's only $4 more than
the pqi for the same size.

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/skusearch.hmx?SCriteria=BA21409&CartID=done&nextloc=

>  Option #2)
>  pqi TURBO 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 533 (PC2 4200) Desktop Memor
>  http://www.pqi.com.tw/product2.asp?TT=1&cate1=79&PROID=194#1
>  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820141202

Seems OK but there are comments regarding whether it'll run at rated
speed. But you (or your Dad) aren't likely to be overclocking the
system, nor playing with RAM timings. Yet pqi describes the part with
the advertised RAM timings on the part itself.

>  Honestly after looking at the pqi and newegg pages, I am not sure what
>  the difference is between these two memory sticks besides $4.00.

It's hard for me to spot a difference either.


>  Support 2 Single Channel DDR2
>  Support DDR2 533/400 Mhz

Shouldn't be a problem for what your Dad is planning to do with the
system. I noticed while visiting the pqi web site that 533/400 DDR2 is
at the lower end of the ram speed scale nowadays. Shouldn't have any
issues running a Celeron, but if you wanted to run faster (core 2 duo
etc) the RAM could potentially be a limiting factor. It's going to be
fast enough for most uses anyway (it's faster than what I got:) :).


>  At first I was looking at this Maxtor drive, but changed my mind.
>  Maxtor 6L100M0 100GB SATA/150 7200RPM 8MB HDD
>  http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=6L100M0-R&cat=HDD

Well, that's a 150 - so it should work. The MB in question does
support SATA up to 150 meg/sec - surely fast enough, but the MB
doesn't advertise specifically SATA 3.0, which is the newer standard
And 7200 is fast enough for most stuff - here, the bottleneck is
likely to be disk transfer speeds, not the interface. And 10K RPM
drives tend to run really hot, so I wouldn't try them unless you had
really good cooling.



Although old, I found some discussion here:

http://discussions.hardwarecentral.com/showthread.php?t=168500

>  I also read and that some Maxtor SATA 3.0/GB drives are not backwards
>  compatible to SATA 1.5Gb/s period.  After doing some reading on the

But I'm not sure (and I doubt) that this particular drive is a SATA
3.0 drive (it specifically states 150 meg/s transfer rate). It does
say that it's a factory recertified model, so apply some caution here.
The price, well that's really inexpensive, which is good. It's got
enough capacity too. And I've had reasonable success with Maxtor
drives in the past - they've lasted so far for years, as has my
so-called IBM Deathstar -- 30 gig IBM Deskstar, (which now are
Hitachi's) in service since October 2000 (!).

That Seagate link I sent you might be a better buy, it's got more than
2x the capacity and I think it was $70 or some.


>  Then I found this Western Digital Drive.
>  Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD 80GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
>  Hard Drive
>  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822135106

One reviewer mentions the jumper setting, and I'd suspect this drive
has a better reuse possibility - down the road when you put it into a
MB that supports 3.0 meg/s SATA, then it'll work. It's still OK to use
it in a slower interface - I'm still doing that on my desktop with the
IBM.

>  I found a new Case, PS, and heatsink/fan at Central Computers in Santa Clara.
>  Tada!

Coolness :).


>