Brain transplant....

Well, after several hours of shoehorning a new motherboard and CPU combo into my PC and reinstalling Windows XP and virtually all of my software, I can finally breathe a sigh of relief.

The deed is done.

I replaced the ECS K7VTA3 v3.1 motherboard and Athlon XP 2400+ processor with a MSI K8N Neo v2.0 and an Athlon 64 3000+.

The K8N Neo v2.0 is a fully loaded Socket 754 motherboard with an NVIDIA nForce3 250 chipset. It features an 800 MHz HyperTransport interface, support for DDR 400, ATA 133 and SATA 150, ATA and SATA RAID, USB 2.0, built-in 5.1 sound and network capabilities, and expandability via one AGP 8x/4x and five PCI slots. It also features dynamic overclocking.

The Athlon 64 3000+ is a 64-bit processor based on AMD's 0.09 micron Venice core. It has a transistor count of 76 million, or more than double the 37.6 million transistors of my old Thoroughbred-B Athlon XP. It runs at 2.0 GHz, and has 512 KB of L2 cache. Here are some before and after pictures:

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This was the inside of my PC before the transplant. What a mess.

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Athlon 64 installed in its socket.

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Finished installation. Cooling the processor is a Thermaltake Silent Boost K8, an all copper heatsink with an 80 mm fan. I wasn't really satisfied with the stock boxed aluminum cooler, so I installed this one instead.

I'll let you know how the updated rig performs after I put it through it's paces. :-)

Comments

TK said…
Some people refer to computers as "Silico sapiens." A new species. Makes you feel like a neurosurgeon to operate on one eh?
April 27, 2006 12:39 PM
Anonymous said…
Hey, so you're back to blogging again? Cool setup, I am also thinking of upgrading mine. :-)
April 27, 2006 2:04 PM
*lynne* said…
omg... brain overload... can't. process. all. that. technical. stuff. mayday mayday mayday! heeehehee
April 27, 2006 3:26 PM
Ronald Allan said…
TK: Yeah. Only wish I could earn as much as one. :-)

Guy: To be honest, I wasn't really that keen on upgrading just yet, since my old rig was still pretty fast compared to most. But when you're troubleshooting and faced with the task of taking your entire PC apart, might as well take the opportunity to shove in some new parts. :-)

lynne: Sorry bout that, the techie in me has gone amuck again. :-)
April 27, 2006 7:32 PM
TK said…
look at the bright side

no malpractice suits hanging over your head.

But skill like yours can be dangerous. if you assign numerical equivalents to COMPUTER (A=1, B=2 and so on) you'll end up with 666. You could be midwifing the birth of the...

ok ignore the last paragraph. I was chanelling oliver stone.
April 28, 2006 7:17 AM
Ronald Allan said…
Gives new meaning to the phrase deus ex machina doesn't it? :-)
April 28, 2006 8:44 PM
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