Athlon XP and Noise Concerns...

I'm planning to go through an upgrade this week. An Athlon XP motherboard fell into my lap, and although I was planning to use it for a HTPC, it's calling out to me. ;-)

However, I've never really gone AMD before. I've built a few Duron-based boxes for others, but overall I've always been an Intel guy. Here's the thing. Although I really want a speed upgrade, I'm also very concerned about noise as I use my computer for home recording.

Here's what I'm doing currently. I've got a midtower case with basically a seven-fan cooling system. I have an Enermax Whisper PSU (350W) which has two fans. I have four case fans (two intake, two exhaust), all undervolted Panaflos. The CPU cooler is a Thermalright SK-6+, using an 80mm undervolted Zalman fan (since the Panaflos don't have RPM monitoring and they set off the alarm on my Nexus).

Overall, although the hard drives (WD) are too loud, I'm very happy with this setup. The BIOS reads CPU idle temps of 50C, and the thermal sensor I placed against the heatspreader reads 35C. I imagine the actual temp is somewhere in between. The CPU is a Pentium III/Tualatin, 1200MHz.

I can afford an Athlon XP 2400+/TBred. My plan is to couple this with a Thermalright SLK-800(A). I might buy a slightly faster 80mm fan for it, but I also plan to undervolt it.

I'm not going to be overclocking, so I want to get the highest stock speed CPU that I can. On the other hand, I also don't want to trade speed for noise.

So, does this sound like a workable setup? Or, should I consider getting a slower XP - or avoiding AMD entirely? Help me out here, AMD-philes. :)

Well if you don't want to overclock, why not look into some purely zalman solutions like the 6000 series, they are quiet and more than fine, the slk-800 is not that good with a low CFM fan, so another might be worth considering.

yeah he's correct, zalman's are great for quiet stock applications. most thermalright's are poor for low speed fan operation (hence your alarmingly high temperature for a tualatin, which run quite cool).

any of zalman's HSF's can be made very quiet, they are geared for it. the 2400+ are pretty cool running, so you should be fine with any of them.


EDIT: if you wanna go cheap, this is a very good heatsink http://www.svc.com/newsvcgc3280.html. i've been running a Thunderbird on it, and as you know T-Bird's get very hot. i can't even hear the fan from 2 feet away.

Hmm...The slk-800 will work, but i'd personally go SLK-900 if possible. Those can take 92mm fans (quieter) which is a bonus. You gotta have the 4 holes around the socket to mount it though. I'd stick a 92mm panaflo L1A on that. 42cfm and 27dba. Very nice. It should be pretty much inaudible at 1ft. If not, you can always undervolt it too...

That would be able to cool the 2400+. However, here is what I suggest you do. Buy a 1700+ DLT3C. I'm not kidding. Buy a 1700 DLT3C. They run at 1.5Vcore default. That's .1Vcore lower than the rest of the AXP's out there. OC it to 2Ghz (ALL of them can do >2Ghz on default voltage). It will run cooler than a stock 2400+ and cost less too. This is definitely the best way to go if your board allows multi adjustment and a 166mhz+ fsb. You could run your CPU at 2Ghz on a 166mhz fsb (or even 200mhz fsb).

This all depends on what your mobo is...so what is it? If it's a new one, Nforce2 or KT400 then you can do what i've outlined above.

talldude beat me to it:D

here is another vote for the 92mm LA1 and the slk-900

i now use a vantec aeroflow but personally i think its loud
and i may switch over to the La1 and slk-900

slk-800 will work, but again, with no overclocking, it is quite a bit of money to spend, and they don't work that well with slower spinning fans. that doesn't mean it sux with lower pressure fans, it means it loses its advantages.

Nice. Two votes for Zalman, and two for Thermalright. You folks were supposed to agree with each other and make my decision easy. Didn't you get that memo? :D

The motherboard is pretty white-bread. It's an ECS K7S5A Pro. Judging by the manual, it does seem to have the ability to adjust the multiplier, voltage, and CPU/RAM frequencies seperately... but of course you never know what you're going to see until you actually try it. The motherboard doesn't have the mounting holes around the CPU socket... just the usual tabs. So I'm pretty much limited to the SLK-800.

I think my CPU temps might be misleading. The temps I'm getting now are the exact same as what I got with my previous cooler - a Vantec unit that sounded like a vacuum cleaner. I'm not opposed to getting another Zalman, though - can any of you confirm that they're using all six retainer tabs on the socket nowadays? I heard that they were, but the pictures on Newegg only show the old center clip. I ask because I used to have a Zalman - one of the older ones - and after changing out my CPU a few times, one of the center tabs on my motherboard's CPU socket broke off.

I'm a little worried about the prospect of overclocking, although the idea of overclocking a 1700+ makes perfect sense. The one little problem is that I'll still be using PC133 for a while. At this point I've got about 1300MB that I really can't afford to replace. I realize it's a bottleneck, but it's one I'll just have to live with for now. Maybe I could get away with just adjusting the multiplier?

Any more thoughts?

if your motherboard can't overclock.. just get a retail AMD processor.. and you should be fine.. those are queit..aren't they?

The GlobalWin FSP82 is made for XP2800s and is very quiet, more then stock AMD HSF (30 DBa)
http://www.globalwin.com.tw/cd_html.html
And you can undervolt it too so it runs quieter.

I use an slk-800 and a panaflo L1A. Works great with my overclocked system (see sig). If you aren't overclocking too much I bet you could 7V the panaflo.
I really like the idea of the slk-900 and 92mm fan. That would probably allow you to flow more air with less noise.

What are your temps like, Pelikan?

Quote:

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Originally posted by KommisMar
What are your temps like, Pelikan?

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36C under load when its hot in the room. I just put in a passive cpu duct and quiet fans. Before the duct I was at 42C under load, with loud case fans.

Nice. That's pretty convincing!

Quote:

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Originally posted by talldude
That would be able to cool the 2400+. However, here is what I suggest you do. Buy a 1700+ DLT3C. I'm not kidding. Buy a 1700 DLT3C. They run at 1.5Vcore default. That's .1Vcore lower than the rest of the AXP's out there. OC it to 2Ghz (ALL of them can do >2Ghz on default voltage). It will run cooler than a stock 2400+ and cost less too. This is definitely the best way to go if your board allows multi adjustment and a 166mhz+ fsb. You could run your CPU at 2Ghz on a 166mhz fsb (or even 200mhz fsb).

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So the XP 1700+ has to be DLT3C as well as B stepping? Umm...that's gotta be tricky to find.

By the way, does it have to be XP 1700+? Or it can be apply on any other AMD chips? (1800+, 2100+..etc)

What's the value breakpoint at these days regarding Athlon XP processors? (for example, when I bought my 1700+ about a year and change ago, that was a good value.. the 1800+ was much more expensive than the 1700, but the 1700 wasn't that much more expensive than the 1600 when compared to the 1800 to 1700 difference).

Thanks