mobo/cpu combo to upgrade PCs

[itfellow]

Hi all,

I work in a small office (about 20+ people) and I need to upgrade PC hardware across the board. I started here a couple of months ago and found that most people are running PCs with Pentium or Pentium Pros and Windows 95. My predecessor went out and bought licenses for everyone for Windows XP, but God only knows what she intended to do with those on such outdated hardware.

Anyway, this is a small county government office, so economy is the key word here. These workstations aren't used for much (terminal emulator to connect to Unix server, sometimes Word and Excel) so doing a max upgrade would be a waste, but I want whatever upgrade I do to last at least the next few years. I've decided to upgrade the motherboard/CPUs (and memory) only, and I was looking at various combos. One combination I was considerng was this:

Abit KV7 motherboard
Athlon 2500+ CPU
512 PC2100 memory

The memory I am still debating. The board will support up to PC3200, but it is twice the price and I'm not sure the demand on the system will be enough to justify it.

Any thoughts on the above or other recommendations would be appreciated.

 

[noellees1]

Isnt a 2500+ a little excessive for an office, i ran Win XP on a 750mhz Pentium III. The 2500's are 1.83gb's! I would consider the 2200 instead as this will still give support into the future and over here in the UK is a good £15/£20 cheaper

 

[paparazi]

OK! stick with a branded motherboards but I would have thought for this application and to save money, a motherboard with built in graphics would have suited you better.
A motherboard based on Via's KM400 chipset would be best for stability and platform price.
All the top four manufactures have a KM400 (unichrome) chipset motherboard in their product line up.
Something like the Asus A7V8X-MX
If you go for the Barton core Athlon XP2.5+ you must buy PC2700 (DDR333) or faster for it to work (not PC2100)
All the Athlons under the XP2.5+ are 266 fsb so the PC2100 that you had you eye on would work with these.
Note* Absolutely must buy branded memory ie: Crucial or Kingston value.
You will also need to replace the power supplies with 350watt plus branded units (esencial for reliability)
Lastly! stick the biggest heatsink/fan unit on there you can at a reasonable price because I'm guessing none of these cases will have extra cooling fans so it is esencial that the CPU cooler is well over rated for the CPU.
This is because of the increased case temps created by the new hardware.
Artic cooler, Copper Silent 2 (cheap and reasonably powerful) with the added bonus of being very quiet.
Martin


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[MaxPipeline]

Consider a CPU/Mobo combo from certain dealers like Outpost (Fry's) or TigerDirect. Here's one example from TigerDirect for $68.99 AR:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=35953&Sku=MBM-M7VKQ-D1600

This should be more than sufficient for your needs and allows for future upgradeability. While I am not a fan of AMD Duron processors, you can easily swap out for an Athlon XP, but for your application a Duron should work fine. Also the mobo has built-in Video so you won't need new video cards either. Only downside is no AGP port, but not likely you will need it either since your graphics demands don't seem high or even moderate, and they still sell PCI video cards in case the video drivers die on the mobo.

 

[MaxPipeline]

One note I forgot to mention, you will still need to buy CPU fans (a few bucks each) and memory. 512MB of PC2100 DDR Ram should be more than sufficient for the next few years. Also from a price/performance/upgradeability standpoint, you can't go wrong with any Socket A system (AMD Duron, Athlon, Athlon XP). Pentium 4 systems are probably not worth the extra cost in your scenario and Celeron processors are generally regarded as not nearly as fast as a comparably priced Athlon XP.

 

[itfellow]

I thought about the cheaper Athlons, like the 2200, but my logic in choosing the 2500 was this: I spend an extra $15-$20 per CPU now (about 25% more) to gain perhaps an extra year or two before these machines have to be upgraded again for 100% ofthe cost of another CPU. Also, from what I have read, the Barton core is supposed to be one of the better ones among the Athlons.

Paparazi, I see your point about using PC2100 with the Athlon XP 2500. PC 2700 would be the way to go there. I just looked up prices and they're pretty darn close anyway. I'm curious though - would the Athlon XP 2500+ fail to work with the PC2100 completely, or would the memory just drag the performance down to the 266mhz level?

Regarding CPU cooling, I was planning on getting the retail CPU boxes which have CPU fans with them. Each existing case now has 1 chassis fan already. Would the Athlon 2500+ really run so hot that I would need a higher-end cooling fan?

The existing PSUs are primarily 250W. There are generally no peripherals other than the NIC (which I could get rid of and use the onboard) an occasional floppy and/or CDROM. Could I expect to get by with the 250W PSU with the new mobo/CPU, or would I be pushing my luck?

 

[noellees1]

The pc im using now runs quite happily with the retail fan, which has no thermal paste i just slaped the fan on the processor with the odd square thing it has and away it went.
The CPU rarely reaches over 50 degrees here. Although if i leave it on for 10 hours like it has been today almost constant use it goes up to around 54
But these temperatures still fall within the recommended temps and as long as it dosnt get hotter than 65 then theres no damage as far as i know.
I would however shove in a couple of cheap case fans i got mine off ebuyer for under a quid and these help circulate air no end.

 

[paparazi]

If you went for the PC2100 memory on auto the motherboard would set it to 133 (266) so the barton XP2.5+ would run several hundred mhz below it's rated 1.83mhz effectively(underclocking) the CPU, you definately need the PC2700 if you go with the XP2.5+ Barton.
You might just get away with the existing PSU's but it is not something I would recommend, it would be close and with so many PC's the last thing you want is unreliability, it's upto you, if they look like good quality units you might be OK, only time would tell.
Stock retail fans will be fine as long as you do have at least one extra case fan fitted (exhausting) near the CPU.
What were your opinions on the motherboard? chipset? if you go with your choice you will have the added expence of additional graphics cards at $40 plus each although the motherboard you chose was excellent but a bit pricey with the addition of seperate display cards.
Martin
Martin


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[paparazi]

One last point.
You could save a few dollars by going 396mb, 256+128mb if you can locate 128mb PC2700.
The reason I say this is I believe 256mb is not quite enough, on a typical machine with XP only about 100mb is left over for applications once XP and other background software have taken what they need, another 256 would take the PC's into the sweet spot leaving over 300mb spare but you could easily get away with just another 128 to save money.
Just a thought when you are considering so many machines.
Martin

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[noellees1]

Ummm Pap im sure somewhere there was a thread saying XP had a problem with odd number ram. Most people go 128,256,512. Im sure it was mentioned somewhere that 396 can cause errors with XP. Sorry i might be totally wrong but i swear i saw something

 

[itfellow]

Given that most users here put such a low demand on their PCs, I was even tempted to think that 256mb RAM would be enough.

Also, I was thinking I might be able to get the existing PCI video cards working in the KV7, even though it supports AGP. That would save me money right there. Finding XP drivers for these old cards can be a challenge though. Is there any reason, from a hardware perspective, for me to think that the PCI cards won't work? I've never tried to do that before.

The KV7 seems to be a solid board, and the reviews seem positive. It would offer some room for expansion later while being reasonable in price now. I also have had good experiences with Abit so far in my personal use, sothey are one of the manufacturers I am comfortable with.

My plan was to purchase 1 set of everything, play around with it a bit and make sure everything works the way I expect it to, then purchase the rest, but I'm still open to other suggestions at the moment.

 

[noellees1]

Well im not sure and really dont take my word for it but if there is an AGP port on the motherboard that teends to be where the bios checks for a graphics card, so the POST would fail???
You may need a hacked bios or this could be a load of mumbo-jumbo

 

[paparazi]

I still maintain that 256mb is borderline for XP, although I have to admit to selling machines with just 128mb of PC133 when XP was first released.
I know these machines will have the minimum of applications installed but I still believe they will benefit longterm with at least another 128mb of ram. As you are probably aware, if multiple applications are running, it is fairly easy to exhaust 256mb, once this is used up the system starts to use the hard drive as temporary memory, thats when things start to stutter, and generally slow down, just a little more memory increases this threshold so that this point is never reached.
Yeh, sure, re-use the PCI cards but before you commit yourself, make sure that XP drivers are available otherwise putting new AGP graphics cards in all of them could be a considerable extra expense (XP is usually excellent with graphics support, it will find a generic driver in it's data base 95% of the time)
I would agree that the motherboard you have chosen definately does give you a fast and stable platform, with a better than average upgrade potential as long as those PCI graphics cards are XP compatible.
I'm also an Abit fan, they are always last to the party but only because they have been busy learning from others mistakes.
There isn't anything wrong with fitting "odd numbered ram" as long as it is the same type and obviously not intended to work in dual channel on a dual channel motherboard.
Martin


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[micker377]

Something I didn't see addressed here: Are the present computers AT or ATX power supplies? If they are AT, you won't be able to hook up a new motherboard. This means new case and power supply for each system.

 

[Xemus]

noellees1, there is no problem running 384 MB RAM on XP, I did for over a year on my home PC and had no issues. The unmatched pairs thing is when you match different brands and speeds and run into stability issues. 256+128 should work fine.

http://www.closedsocket.com

 

[paparazi]

micker377 has a good point about checking that these older units arn't AT.
As well as the actual power supplies being ATX are the cases physically big enough to take a full sized motherboard like the Abit KV7?
Another thing I've just noticed looking at a bigger picture of the KV7, it appears to need (upper top corner near the PS2 connectors) the additional P4 power connector that only comes with newer power supplies, so it looks like if you are set on this motherboard you will need new PSU's.
Alternately, not all new motherboards require this connection, you'll have to do some research.

Here is the KV7

http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/products.php?categories=1&model=125

Martin
Ma

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[itfellow]

Other than 1 or two extremely old ones, my systems are all ATX. Some even have 300W PSUs. However, none of the older ones have the atx12v.

The specs on the Abit page for KV7 don't say anything about power other than ATX standard, but looking at other review sites, the atx12v connector is pointed out, so I guess that eliminates this board from consideration for me unless I want to replace all the power supplies. I think failing to mention that little tidbit under the specs is kind of a nasty trick on Abit's part. Thanks for pointing it out.

 

[noellees1]

Thanks for correcting me their, i just had a problem before where i had 'odd numberd ram' and XP. Altough i eventually solved it by buying some different ram i just looked at the lable stuck on the old ram and they were different speeds one 2700 and the other 2100 my bad!

 

[itfellow]

OK, I've got a question: I've been reading up on the whole P4 atx12v connector on the Abit boards and from what I see, it is not necessary to have the P4 connector on the PSU you use for the board (for AMD boards). It should work anyway. Here's a broken English link from Abit on the subject:

http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/kbase.php?categories=1&model=18&faq_id=29

Has anyone had experience with powering an Abit AMD board, like the KV7, KD7, etc and not using the P4 connector?

 

[JimInKS]

itfellow,
If the systems you are upgrading are as old as you say most of the components will be reaching end of life. Fans will be worn out, hard drives will have a lot of hours on them, be small and s l o w. The power supply was designed for P1 chips which require a lot less power than current processors. You may have trouble fitting a modern motherboard to your case.

My 2 cents is you will save yourself a lot of headaches if you just build a new system ( you can still use your current kbd, mouse, monitor if you desire). The old system will still be operational while you are working on the upgrade, and when you are done you will still have an operational computer. You can get a decent case for $50 (I like Inwin), 7200 rpm hard drive for $60, CD-ROM drive for $25, Floppy drive for $10 (which you might want to eliminate entirely).

You can put a decent little system together for $300 - $350 per copy.