Upgrading

[pat]

Well call it a lateral upgrade.

I had considered stepping up to an Athlon 64, but for the time being I decided to do one more Athlon XP. My main purpose was to upgrade my daughter?s system, which is getting sort of dated now (MSI Turbo2 Via 133a) so I bought myself a new motherboard and will put the MSI Delta2, Athlon 2500+ with 512 ram and the ATI AIW 8500DV I?m currently using into her box. That should keep her going for a while and work out well for her as she gets free cable and cable internet at her place.

I think I?ve read at least a dozen motherboard manuals in the last couple of weeks and decided to try one of the Gigabyte GA-7N400 PRO2. I?ve always wanted to try out a Gigabyte motherboard and this is one full-featured board. Most of the reviews I?ve read are very positive, so I?m giving it a shot.
I also picked out an Athlon XP 2800+ Barton and an ATI AIW 9600XT.
I was going to try out some of the Crucial Ballistix, but once I started shopping around on the Crucial site I noticed they had $10 coupons on PC 2700 512mb modules. I picked up a couple of those instead for just slightly more than I would have spent on a couple of the 256mb Ballistix modules.

The Turbo will become my secondary computer and the Q will go upstairs to serve as a second access point for the internet.
This should keep me going for a while.

[scuzzy]

I for one will be interested in how your system performs once it's built. I've been putting off building a new system, although the thought still crosses my mind. I will likely give an AOpen mobo a shot, as well as the newer Athlon 64. We shall see.

The mobos that catch my eye are the AK-86-L and AK-89 Max. Both have their good/bad points, but the AK-86-L is small enough to fit in the tightest cases. That might be the route I take, since I'm considering going with a SFF (Small Form Factor) case. Take a look at this Antec Aria at NewEgg.com for $96 + S/H.

[pat]

Will do, everything is due in on Friday.

If I had gone with the Athlon64, I was looking hard at the MSI K8N Neo Platinum with an Athlon 64 3000+ with one 512mb Ballistix.
It?s just too hard for me to spend $175 on a processor that will most likely cost $110 six months from now.  ::)

My 3 finalists for a Atholn XP board were the MSI Delta2 Platinum and the Epox EP-8RDA3+ along with the Gigabyte board.

[Dalaran]

I bought a Pro2 Gigabyte once before but I actually returned it because I didn't find many good reviews for it, it wasn't very well-known at the time I guess. Why don't you check out a DFI Lan Party? They're very feature rich and functional.

[pat]

Thanks for the input and welcome to Poasters.
I had spent quite a bit of time selecting a motherboard and whether to do another Athlon XP system or go for an Athlon 64. In the end I decided, for me, for now, another Athlon XP is just fine.

Anyway, I?m very pleased with the new system, it went together without any problems and it?s been very stable. I have a few pictures and some quick comments. Once I have a chance to use it some I'll add some more.



I picked up one of the Antec True Power 430 watt power supplies. It?s runs very quietly and has plenty of connectors. The standard ATX and 12 volt connector along with 2 floppy dive connectors. A 6-pin aux connector, seven 4-pin peripheral connectors, two 15-pin serial connectors and two fan only connectors that will support up to 3 case fans.
Stock Antec fans run slower or I should say the temperature of the system determines their speed. This system is nice and quiet.



Here?s a shot of the motherboard. Notice the 4 slots for ram modules instead of the normal three on most N-Force motherboards a nice feature if adding more ram is a consideration at least if you want to keep the dual-channel ram feature.
I like the fact that this board has two additional IDE channels, it?s getting hard to find motherboards with IDE three and four. It uses the GigaRAID ATA Raid Controller. This is a more traditional hardware based raid controller that supports raid 0, 1, 0+1. The IDE channels can also be used in a non-raid configuration and will support all IDE drives.
There are also two Sata connectors that can be used in a Raid configuration or as normal single drive installations.
It also has the Dual-Bios feature which I suppose, could come in handy. I haven?t had much of a chance to check that out yet though.
Some of the other features include two firewire one front one rear, four rear and two front USB 2.0 connectors. An included bracket for surround sound and SPDIF and one rear Gigibit lan connector.
That?s the most of it. I like the layout of the board, my only complaint is that it would have been nice if the ATX power connector was further up into the right-hand corner.


Here are just a few more pictures.

[Carskick]

Nice build! Hope it gives your daughter many years of reliable service.

[Igloo]

nice build m8, and hope it keeps her happy :P

[topdawg2002]

Nice System

[trav]

Cool!

[Dalaran]

Thats a pretty good build. After checking again, the 7N400 Pro2 has pretty much most of the features you'll need for a standalone home PC. And the dual BIOS feature just recently saved a friend of mine  ;) .

I also love the way the IDE channel connectors are placed, because they let you keep the IDE cables away from the processor and the fan so they don't block airflow, and believe me its a good thing the ATX power connector is near the IDE channel connectors. I had a problem with my MSI board because the IDE cables and the ATX power connector covered the CPU's fan and increased my CPU temperature.

[pat]

Thank you all for your comments.

[yokosi]

Very nice build.  I've heard great words about those gigabyte motherboards and know a few that have built them, nothing but  positive feedback.  Hope she enjoys the new rig.

[pat]

Thanks Y

Perhaps I should clear up the fact that the Gigabyte motherboard went into my system and I put my MSI K7N Delta into my younger daughters system as an upgrade to an older MSI Turbo-R Limited Edition, I kept that as a secondary system. I will probably keep the Gigabyte board until my other daughter needs a system early next summer when she graduates university and has to turn in her laptop.

[yokosi]

Sorry about that, I must have read it a bit too fast and missed out on that part.  Glad you like it.

[pat]

So far I think my favorite feature of the new system is the FM tuner included on the ATI AIW.
The included wire antenna, the kind that you get with most stereos was pretty much useless. Ok, it did work if I held it up outstretched as far as I could reach and turned it slowly until I got good reception. Of course I couldn?t do much on the computer at the time. I went and got one of those amplified rabbit ears and they work great.
You can record songs, etc. and save as mp3?s. There is FM on demand that lets you pause and resume live broadcast, similar to TV on demand. You can also schedule a recording event ahead of time just like you would with a VCR. There are five presets for stations, plus an alarm clock if you need it.
I have no complaints with the sound quality I?m getting using the on-board sound either.

[scuzzy]

pat,

Sounds like a great system. The FM tuner certainly seems worthwhile. There is a local station here that plays 70s songs only on Saturday nights, but I can rarely tune in due to my job. This sounds like it might be the solution I'm looking for.

As for the antenna, I can always stretch the wire to Indiana and attach it to Ace's jester hat.

[pat]

If you want the All-in-Wonder with the FM tuner, right now the only model with it is the AIW 9600XT. The other models don?t offer the FM tuner. Even the much more expensive AIW 9800Pro doesn?t offer that feature.
When I bought mine they were $179 at newegg, they have since gone up a few dollars to $188.  Those prices do change often though, when I was first looking they were $179, went up to $199, then back down to $179 , so i bought it.
Still not a bad deal considering the last time I looked Best Buy was selling the AIW 9600Pro for $199. They did not carry the AIW 9600XT.

[Hoot]

Nice build, and exceptional components. Nice big roomy case. Great power supply (super 12V) and nice mainboard. You don't need 4 slots though to keep dual channel if you have two and add a thirrd. It's a common misnomer. As long as you have 2 identially matched dimms in opposite banks they will auto-detect as dual channel, and a third will run in single channel by itself. Running 4 dimms in an nforce2 board would be a bottleneck anyway. No way to improve performance  really above 1G in an nforce2 board even with Xp3200+ an beyond speeds. Now - with an 865PE, 875P, 915, 925 PCI-X board that's another story. Still though the Gigabyte boards is nice.

[pat]

Thanks Hoot and thanks for the extra information.
I notice a real improvement in performance with a gig of ram over my old system. At least it seems that way to me. I don?t think just the minor step up in processor power would account for it all. I seriously doubt I would ever add more ram to this system anyway.

One gig ought to be enough for anyone.
;)

[Hoot]

Yeah. If you have 4 sicks of identically matched dimms now..? then it should run about as good as 2x512. Having the matched sticks helps latency and timings settle in alot better. You don't have to spend time finding that "break point" between different brands together,

[pat]

No nothing in slots 3 or 4, I'm using two Crucial PC 2700 512's.