This week brought with it my latest system, and AMD Athlon 900 MHz. I had been using my dual Celeron system for over a year, and felt it was time for a change. Lots of options were available, but the speed and price of the Athlon drew me that way. With the release of the "Thunderbird" version of the Athlon and the VIA KT133 chipset I was ready to go.
The quest for the right Athlon processor and motherboard combination was tough. I looked at the sweet spots for Athlon pricing and saw the 800 MHz and 900 MHz were my best bets. I like to buy retail boxed processors for two reasons: a three year warranty and the included heatsink and fan. I checked around but couldn't find a dealer with retail chips, so I would have to buy OEM. This would mean a shorter warranty period and no heatsink. I chose the 900 MHz model as it was $450 Cdn.
The issue of the heatsink is a big one, as AMD has had numerous problems with heatsinks cracking the chips. Therefore AMD established an approved list on their site for heatsinks, power supplies and motherboards. I recommend checking this before putting together an Athlon system. My regular vendor supplied his OEM chips with CoolerMaster heatsinks, which are on the approved list.
Next came the motherboard search. Most manufacturers now have a KT133 model, but the ones I wanted,Asus or Abit, both include a third party IDE controller for ATA100 support. The KT133 chipset supports ATA66, and tests show there's no difference right now between ATA66 and ATA100 on a desktop. I had dealt with add on items with my Abit BP6 Celeron motherboard that had a Highpoint ATA66 controller. It's a nice feature but there's no way to disable it, and it adds cost. This led me to more standard designs from Microstar and Gigabyte. Straight forward and reliable was what I wanted so I looked at the two models and chose the cheapest, the Gigabyte GA7ZX-1 for $172 Cdn.
Since this was mostly a new system I decided to get a new video card and hard drive as well; that way I could leave my old system mostly intact and move it down the line. More on that later. The Creative Annihilator 2 was a GeForce 2 GTS video card, the fastest available right now and going for a mere $400 Cdn. I could skimp, but to what end? I had been using a TNT2 Ultra video card for the better part of two years, which illustrated to me the value of getting the fastest and using it for the long haul. I chose a Maxtor Diamond Max Plus 20 GB ATA100 7200 RPM hard drive; now that's a product name! It was $200 Cdn and very fast, so I bought it.
I had a spare Aopen HX08 ATX full tower case, so I installed everything there and was off to the races. As well a D-Link 10/100 NIC, Sound Blaster Live! Value PCI sound card and an LG 48X CD-ROM completed the picture. I pulled two of the three 128 MB DIMMs from the dual Celeron machine and had a very fast Athlon machine on my hands. After installing Windows 98 SE and Windows 2000 I started to benchmark, and found a few problems.
It seems the GeForce 2 and the VIA Athlon chipsets don't play well together. I kept locking up when running 3D Mark 2000 in Windows 2000, even though it ran fine in Windows 98. I used the current Creative drivers in both operating systems, but couldn't figure it out. A trip around the web revealed it to be an AGP timing problem, and trying different BIOS configurations would solve it. I did just that and achieved some needed stability. Unfortunately this led me to my current problem: heat.
I had installed Motherboard Monitor to watch the CPU and motherboard temperatures; this is important to me since the old overclocking days. It showed that my Athlon 900 MHz was averaging 46 degrees Celsius! I checked my Celeron system and saw it ran at 33 degrees Celsius, so I was concerned. A few quick items: checked the heatsink to see it was making contact with the CPU and that the system fans were working. No problems there, but I noticed the heatsink used a thermal pad. I prefer thermal paste so I scraped the pad off and applied a thin layer of paste. This brought the temperature down to 43 degrees Celsius, but still too hot.
Next up was the power supply. Even though it was an ATX 250 watt, there was no air intake on the bottom above the CPU. The Aopen HX08 case doesn't have a rear fan, so the heat was coming off the heatsink's fan and going nowhere. I thought about replacing the power supply, but for that kind of money I decided on a new case. Looking at what's available, I settled on an Antec SX1030 SO/HO server case. On the surface this seems like overkill, but look at it's features and you'll agree it's sweet. It has two rear fans by the CPU and AGP slot plus an excellent power supply, all for around $150 Cdn. I know you can get a good mid tower case for 75 bucks, but I want this one to last me. Unfortunately they're on backorder, so look for a follow up in the next few weeks. In the meantime I run the system at 43 degrees, but don't leave it on all the time.
In the real world, computer news was slow this week. AMD announced a 750 MHz Duron processor, giving them the leading speed in value processors. With AMD providing cheap, fast processors I don't see how Intel can keep the lead for long. Samsung is increasing DRAM production, which I hope will lower prices. American Express is setting up temporary credit cards for internet purchases; no more worries if the number is only good for that day. That's about all that caught my eye: next week will be much busier.
by Scott VanderPloeg
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