Have a Pentium D, Need a MotherBoard.
I won a Pentium D 820 off ebay for a pretty good price, so now I need a mobo. What would you guys suggest?
This appears to have excellent reviews http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813121286
I am open to any suggestions. Im guessing Asus or MSI will be my choice, as I hear ABIT aint what it used to be.
Should I be able to run the 820 at 1066 fsb since the description says it has 800 mhz fsb?
Also, whats the deal with needing ddr 667 to run a fsb of 1066? Shouldnt I only need ddr 533? It seems that for many motherboards, the "DDR2 standard" is ddr 667, but the boards only supports fsb of 800/1066.
This appears to have excellent reviews http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813121286
I am open to any suggestions. Im guessing Asus or MSI will be my choice, as I hear ABIT aint what it used to be.
Should I be able to run the 820 at 1066 fsb since the description says it has 800 mhz fsb?
Also, whats the deal with needing ddr 667 to run a fsb of 1066? Shouldnt I only need ddr 533? It seems that for many motherboards, the "DDR2 standard" is ddr 667, but the boards only supports fsb of 800/1066.
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For overclocking you can run the ram at 1-1 so to hit the 1066 fsb if the divider is 1-1 the ram will be at 533.
The ASus 955X based mobo is really nice, you might look into it. A buddy of mine has one and he's hitting 3860 with his D 820 on air with his. He's switching it to water soon to try to hit more, right now his Vcore is 1.4V
What are your goals? Hope it includes folding. The 820 is superb for that. Do you want to overclock? slightly? moderate? heavy? Look at my OC in signature. That's with a Asus' step down from the P5WD2. If you aren't interested in overclcocking, or just interested in moderate overclocking, you can get a very good board from Asus or MSI (stable, smooth, and easy to set up) for $100 or less.
Concerning the D820. Don't even think about more than light overclocking without very good air cooling. Is your CPU retail boxed, with the Intel cooler? They are good coolers, but not for high performance.
But you've made me think. I should modify my advise to Fudgam: Don't be surprised if your overclocking is limited by the Intel retail cooler. But then, there are reports of very high overclocks with the stock cooler. And to clarify, you certainly can do some decent overclocking without the expense of the pricey Asus P5WD2. I've done moderate overclcocking with both the Asus P5PL2 and the MSI 945P Neo-F.
The cpu is OEM, so no stock HSF. I will need to buy a HSF seperate. I have no plans for water cooling. Any recomendations for HSF?
Id say im interested in light-moderate overclocking. I dont mind doing guess & check with ram speeds, voltage, multipliers and all that good stuff. The only performance this pc will be doing is games. No video editing or CAD or anything like that.
Heatsink? If you aren't going for OC glory, then there's a whole bunch of heatsinks that would work well. I guess you'd just want to set a price goal on heatsinks and go from there. For heavy overclocking, I'd suggest the TT Big Typhoon. So I guess bump it down a notch and you'll have plenty of thermal headroom at a good price. I really hadn't looked for moderate cooling potential with my setup, except for the first couple weeks. At that time I ran a Zalman 7000, which still allowed a light overclock.
It's very stable. I'm not running mine because I killed it. I'm not accustomed to a carpeted computer room, as is my office now at home, and I've killed more than one component due to static shock. If you do get the MSI, when you are setting it up, I'd remove both the northbridge and southbridge heatsinks, clean them off and apply some quality thermal paste at the same time you install the CPU. Both the NB and SB on that board get hot.
Im looking through socet 775 heatsinks on newegg, and many say they are for pentium 4's, but not specifically Pentium D procs. Does it matter?
What heatsinks have you found that interest you?
Artic Cooling Freezer 7 looks to be a good cooler and doesnt cost too much. $50 is too much for me to spend on a HSF.
That is a good choice on the mobo. I have had good experiences with MSI.
Do install the MSI updating software. It works well for BIOS and chipset driver updating.
Could you explain the options for cpu:fsb ratios? I noticed in another thread you mentioned that the only option were 3:4 and 4:5 (or somethign along those lines). What does this mean? If the multiplier is 14 and the FSB is 200, what does the 3:4 ratio do?
-- For DDR2 533 that would be CPU FSB 200MHz (800MHz quad pumped) - DRAM 533MHz
-- For DDR2 667 that would be CPU FSB 200Hz - DRAM 667 MHz
If you were to apply a 4:3 ration using DDR2 667, your starting point with the CPU at default would be CPU FSB 200MHz - DRAM 500MHz. See, that would leave 167MHz overclocking on the FSB before you even hit the stock speed of your DRAM. At default speed of the CPU FSB, using a 5:4 ratio with DDR2 667, your starting point would be 533MHz. Same principile applies with DDR2 533. Remember though, CPU Z will read your FSB in quad pumped, stock at 800MHz, but will read your DRAM as straight (not DDR), stock at 266 or 333, which is DDR2 533 and 667 respectively.