Where to find a compatible CPU for 440BX?

[AndrewDV]

Hello,

I have an old 440BX motherboard with a celeron 300 in it. It has seen a lot of use over the years and is currently in retirement. I would like to use it again as a simple DVD/Music machine. To do this, I need to up the processor a bit. From what I have read, the max CPU that it can handle is a 500MHz PIII. Does anyone know of a vendor that still sells this processor?

Thank you

[Dr Mordrid]

Update the board to the latest BIOS then get socket 370 adapter. Depending on which one you get (the Asus and Gigabyte units are very good) this will let you use a PGA or FCPGA PIII in a slot 1 mainboard.

My Asus P3B-F configured with its latest BIOS and an Asus socket 370 adapter can handle a 1ghz PIII.

Dr. Mordrid

[AndrewDV]

Hi Doc,

Thanks for the information! Do you have any part numbers for that converter? If you have a preferred vendor for the converter and CPU, I'd appreciate that as well.

Thanks!

[K6-III]

The Abit, Iwill, and MSI slotkets are amongst the best...

[Dr Mordrid]

The Asus is the S370-133 and the Gigabyte is the GA-6R7Pro/6R7+.

http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=175

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/support/user_pdf/6r7pro.pdf

Both are parts I have personally used. Both can handle FCPGA CuMine processors.

Unfortunately slotkets are a bit hard to come by these days since slot1 boards are several generations out of style and most companies stopped production.

One company still distributing them is StarTech.

Startech

Shopper.com's search came up with these retailers for their card;

StarTech retailers

I have no idea how good a slotket it is, but most of these parts are pretty straightforward OEM items.

Otherwise you might want to check some of the local OEM computer part retailers. They may still have the Asus or Gigabyte on their shelves for repair purposes.

Dr. Mordrid

[pabst]

I actually did this same upgrade a few months ago on a pair of Abit BX6r2 motherboards.

I got the FCPGA Adapters for $10 shipped from : SVCompucycle . They were the generic variety, but I haven't run across any problems yet.

As the later Celerons come with 100MHz FSB, I chose the 1GHz FCPGA variety from NewEgg .

I'm pretty sure these adapters will not work with Tualatin based processors so any Celeron with 256K L2 won't work (the 128K Coppermine variety definitely work).

Also, if you have a BIOS option called CPU Speed Error Hold, you'll probably have to disable this. This throws an annoying little error at bootup if the CPU multiplier is incorrect. BX6r2 doesn't support 10x in BIOS so its always incorrect. It will boot correctly regardless of this since the processor multiplier is locked anyway.

pabst.