[PLUG] hardware - a deal I couldn't refuse

[jeff <jeffv@op.net>]

A few weeks ago, my main pc went poof.  Just a blip and it was gone.
It was either the mb or cpu, but it was quite a few years old so it
didn't matter which.

After checking with Santa, I was granted approval to take advantage of a
deal I found online: AMD X2 5000 Black $129, mb $50-100, 2g DDR800 $50.

The Black versions are multiplier-unlocked chips designed for
overclocking.  Web research revealed no gotchas.  Tom's Hardware had a
very enlightening test of this chip, stating that because of
overclocking, AMD was basically giving away its fastest chip, the 6400,
for the price of the 5000.  They got it cranked up to 3.2GHz before
anything got weird.  Because they overclock via multiplier, the chip
doesn't require drastic cooling measures (water, freon, sitting near
Hillary).

The deals were had via newegg.com, where they're still available.  I've
had only success with them the few times I ordered at work.  Note that
they have a 7 day return policy for defective and 30 day exchange.
After that you deal with the mfgr.

Some things to consider if you're going to do this:

1. motherboard/case size - I got a regular ATX mb for my regular case
2. memory - it's worth whatever the DDR800 memory costs, but we got a
great deal anyway. The boards seem to take 8-16g max.
3. SATA - most boards had one IDE connector and 2-6 SATAs - plan
accordingly for hd's and cd/dvd drives.

I realized I was short a fan so I checked what was recommended or
available.  It went from a $10 cheapie all the way up, so I settled for
the recommended Arctic Cooler for $20.  Retail being what it is, I also
paid $5 for a tube of conductive grease (which I chased my wife around
with that evening).

The mb came with one whole SATA cable and one IDE.  Ymmv.  I checked on
each board recommended by Tom's, running $48 to $75.  Nothing special
was needed so I compared features and went with the $75 unit due to it
having an additional PCI slot, gig ethernet, and more SATA connectors.
It also had onboard video but I wound up using a card I had sitting around.

I got everything neatly installed (if by neatly you mean INSIDE the
case, but still hanging out), right up to where i had to install the
Arctic Cooler.  The picture did not do this thing any favors; it was
HUGE.  Between looking like a radiator and the front of Darth Vader's
mask, it was a most impressive beastie.  I kept putting it in front of
my mouth, saying "Use the force, Luke."  Mind you, my coworkers were
uniformly impressed.  Of course they're impressed by blinking lights and
one of them plays with magnets and hurts himself a lot.

In any case, this device fit much easier onto my face than its intended
target (the cpu).  I have never found fans easy to get along with and
this was no exception.  In fact, it was much closer to a bloody battle,
but we only used MY blood.  It had a convenient lever to latch the whole
thing up when you got it connected to both pins of the clamp.  And the
latch WAS very convenient and locked the entire thing up, once I got it
connected to both pins of the clamp.  This involved removing the power
supply I just spent 15 minutes attaching, the aforementioned bleeding,
30 minutes of screaming, and the complete destruction of whatever I hit,
threw, and stepped on in the process.  I broke a fan rail protector
simply holding it down and trying to latch the fan.

Another mb note: the power supply connector is a 24 pin jobbie, so if
you have a 20 pin power supply (like I did), you need an adapter or a
different power supply.

After my wife, the nurse, got me patched up, I checked again for stupid
mistakes (of which I make way more than my share) and powered the bugger
up.  And for all my efforts, I got a blinking cursor.

"Now I'm screwed," I thought.  I know squat about this generation of
chips and boards.

A nice dinner (at 10pm) has a way of rejuvenating the mind, so back I
went.  I figured I'd first try using onboard video, in case that was
confusing things.   - nope.  When I tried after pulling the IDE cable, I
was rewarded with a BIOS screen.  Yes, an IDE argument had killed the
boot process.

Feeling much better, I proceeded to boot to the cd of Xubuntu 7.04
(Feisty), as it's all I had at the moment.  Damn if it didn't run.  It
seemed to find everything quickly and well, so I hit INSTALL.  After a
flawless install, I proceeded to overclocking by shoving the thing right
up to the Tom's limit of 3.2GHz.  Then I upgraded to Gutsy via the
suggestion given by the update notification.

There have been 2 lockups or so since I got everything installed and set
up to my liking and I'm going to keep an eye on this.  If it happens
again, I might turn down the multiplier by one to see if that fixes it.

I haven't spent enough time to critically evaluate the performance but
it's fast.  Later in the week I'll put it through its paces, but it
doesn't feel like that tremendous a speed burst.  The old cpu was an AMD
2400 or thereabouts, with 1.5g and the same OS.  Keep in mind that I run
Xubuntu on purpose - even with one of the fastest dual cores on the
market, I still don't want my GUI bogging down my pc.  No Vista, no
Compiz, no KDE, no eye candy (except my wife and dog).  I use a solid
color background for the desktop.

It's been quite a while since my home pc was much faster than my work
pc.  With the way my Nemesis OS(XP) has been treating me, I may soon
have the only MIS dept servicing an OS that they refuse to run.  It's
been about 2 months since the last complete reinstall of XP and it's
doing weird things that usually don't start til many months down the
line.  I actually have a screenshot of a command prompt telling me the
system doesn't recognize the command `ping' (something ate the path).


In any case, if you don't mind getting your hands dirty, this is a very
worthwhile project.  It's also an incredibly cheap way to get a hell of
an upgrade.  The whole thing cost me about $225.

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