DUAL CPU Motherboard recommendations

[X-Caliber]

Hi,

The latest revision of my motherboard has a new voltage regulator, which can go down to 1.3V for each CPU. Right now I am using two Slot-T adapters; I have to make a slight (soldering) modification to make them work in a dual configuration on my board. I got one Tualatin on the way (from eBay), it is the latest stepping (B1). I have to find another, so I am just waiting. I am also running two Corsair PC150 CAS2 UNBUFFERED DIMMs, and looking for more! From the (memory) benchmarks that I have seen, the 440BX chipset running at 133MHZ FSB is supposed to be pretty fast.

[X-Caliber]

a_h:

Can you clarify this statement: "Brought only ~1.5% more performance..." Are you referring to a specific benchmark, if so, which one? Have you tried out the dualhead features yet? I have a G400MAX, and what I really want is both gamma correction and a hardware overlay for each monitor. It would be great if this card can pick up most of the slack from watching DVDs (like the ATI cards, when using powerdvd). Another cool feature would be to span the DVD image across both monitors, or all three monitors with the triple head feature (all running at the same resolution of course!). Of course, it would also be nice to have different background on each monitor!! But I guess that is a Windows limitation.

[a_h]

I meant 3Dmark2001SE.

Sorry, didn't test dual head features - currently I have only 1 monitor...

[X-Caliber]

a_h: another question, what do you mean by this:

"However: dual tualatins are a dream to build a silent rig. My machine is really silent and I like having power AND silence."

Why is it a silent rig? I assume you are referring to noise levels; but don't you use CPU cooling fans and heat sinks? I know the Tualatins output less power, but they still need to be cooled.

Another question, there are two steppings for the Tualatins, B0 and B1. Do you know the difference between the two (from what I gater at Intel's website, they use less capacitors on the second stepping - but no mention why??)

[a_h]

The Tualatins emit half the thermal power (~30W) compared against Athlon (75-80W) or PIV (70W), so you don't need powerful fans to cool them.

Passive cooling might not be possible, but currently the loudest components in my system are the power supply's fan and the parhelia-fan - both are going to be modified.

The problem with the modern cpus is that extreme amounts of heat are generated in a small area, so you need powerfull cooling to prevent overheating, means copper cooler and a powerful fan. Since you need 2 of them in your case, they're going to make really much noise, additional you will need a case fan to prevent an air temperature above 40°C in your case.

I've copper coolers and the case fan too, but only to achieve really low temperatures, besides the fans I use are inaudible (the 92mm case fan working at 1400 rpm for example).

In short: my machine is far more silent than the machine of one of my friends who owns 1 AthlonXP 1600+.

Regarding the steppings: usually using the same steppings is recommended, Intel claims even mixed steppings work flawlessly. AFAIK only some bugs have been ironed out, you can look at the pIII-datasheets and revision history (http://developer.intel.com/design/PentiumIII/specupdt/).

I'm using 2 b0s.

[UtwigMU]

My Celeron Tualatin 1.1@1.47 1.5V runs at 44°C under load (prime95) with stock HS and fan via resistor @ 2000RPM.

My Bartons 2500+ @ 2.26 1.85V run at 53° and 50°C under load (prime95) with SK7s and Zalman F1s @ 3000 RPM. (Testing stability, didn't try reducing RPM of fans yet).

If you don't overvolt and overclock Bartons or Thoroughbreds with SK7 and 2000RPM 80mm fan can be as quiet as Tualatins.


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[MultimediaMan]

Amen UtwigMu....

With a good air cooling scheme, you can easily cool a fast Barton with an 80-92MM, 20-25dB Fan:

http://www.systemcooling.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1208

That heatsink is going on my next Single CPU Athlon project for sure.

That said, I'm also putting the finishing touches on an Acorp 815ED Dual 700MHz Cumine machine as my Linux/Repair Box. It will run a pair of OCZ Gladiator 3Copper heatsinks with 60mm Medium speed fans with only slightly more noise than a single CPU machine.

[Marshmallowman]

A bit of water cooling and you get a very quite system.

The only think I usualy hear is my "noisy" seagate 160G SATA drive
(that with a xp2400 at 11*204)

[X-Caliber]

water cooling, I know it's common, but don't you think that it is a little extreme ???

[MultimediaMan]

Eventually I think we will be looking at water cooling for desktops as standard equipment, be it heat pipe or something more elaborate. Right now it is extreme only because the gear we have now was designed to be air-cooled from the get-go. This could change dramatically if the boys and girls at AMD and Intel decide it's time for a different solution. IRC Toshiba offered a water-cooled lappie at one time, dunno if they still make it, though.

[Marshmallowman]

Some of the kits you can get are well packaged and easy to use(corsair) they are almost mainstream now.

But in a hot climate the in really pays off.

[a_h]

Glad to hear that it isn't that impossible to cool even today's cpus silently!

I think water cooling will not become a new cooling standard for the masses. Why? Because it's getting really difficult to produce power supplies that can handle more than 60 amperes at 1.5 volts.

Intel has a work group to determine wether such supplies can be build cheaply or even wether they can be build at all.

Water cooling is in terms of cooling itself a very powerfull method, but you get side effects like uncooled voltage regulators (a real problem!) or uncooled hard disks.

Besides: I don't know any water cooled power supplies, so this part is going to be the loudest of your system anyway.

Radiators have to be cooled to and you need a water pump (the eheim I know is not really silent in terms of vibrations).

I get the feeling this is may be a discussion me against you - but that's not true! I like modern hardware - I like the Barton, the mighty 3mb L3 Xeon and the opteron for sure.

But I prefer the tualatin, since it's powerfull enough for me (my P scores only 6% worse that an AthlonXP 2400+ with DDR333 in 3DMark2001Se!) and draws only 30Ws - 60W total, instead of 150W in the case of a powerful PIV/Barton. Easy to cool, silent in operation.