Brucek's New PC..... The BruceBuster

**Trevor Schell** · 24 October 2004, 01:27 Sunday

Congrats Bruce!!!
I look forward to seeing it once she is put together.
I think your collection of parts you chose is excellent.
Especially the CoolerMaster Cavalier case, which is a beauty.
You also made a good choice in going with the AMD 64 processor.
I wish I would have went that route.

So now we have the Kevin Krusher, The Trevor Trouncer and the Bruce Buster..

**Kevin P** · 24 October 2004, 08:58 Sunday

Nice rig there Bruce, that's the same motherboard I have in my Trevor Trouncer.

Is that A64 3400+ one of the new 90nm chips? If it is, I hear those overclock nicely.

Looks like you'll have fun building your new Bruce Buster! Keep us posted on the progress.

**brucek** · 24 October 2004, 11:44 Sunday

Is that A64 3400+ one of the new 90nm chips? If it is, I hear those overclock nicely.

Kevin - I believe it's made with 130nanometer SOI nodes as opposed to the newer 90nm, but it's hard to be sure since the AMD site always seems to be behind and so I have to rely on internet rumour. :roll:

My understanding is that this Newcastle S.939 3400+ was released around September and is clocked at 2.4Ghz with a HyperTransport bus of 800Mhz as opposed to the 3500+ at 2.2Ghz with a 1000HT bus. So I believe they're similar in performance.

The part number is difficult to understand because again it's newer than the AMD site.
The part number is #ADA3400DEP4AZ.
This would say it's a 3400 with a (D)939pinout, (E)1.5volt operating temp, (P)case temp of 70degrees, (4)512KB cache and (AZ)revision higher than listed on the AMD site.
The warranty code is different and has a '9' in the code (CP2-A64-3400 9C) which may indicate it's the newer Winchester 90nanometer process technology - but who knows.

Anyway, I am likely going to be satisfied with it's regular clock speed. I'll leave the overclocking to guys like you and trevor. 8O

Here's an interesting chart:

Athlon64

http://www.c627627.com/AMD/Athlon64/

Here's an AMD release:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20041024065310.html

brucek

**JOY DIVISION** · 25 October 2004, 01:40 Monday

Bruce,
With the new Cooler Master Cavalier, does the MB tray slide out? I was considering this case for my nephew, but I think there was a trade-off from the tool-less design, which they did not have before. You're gonna like the tool-less design since installation and upgrade will be a snap. Right choice on the PSU, Enermax is just awesome, I still have about 2 of those laying around the closet. With the 2 fans on the case though might be a little issue with the 5900, I have a friend that had those and they get pretty loud at full loads,but otherwise a great v/c might want to mod those, I think Zalman has what you need.

**brucek** · 25 October 2004, 16:27 Monday

Bruce, With the new Cooler Master Cavalier, does the MB tray slide out?

No, it would have been nice though - but I have to say the opening area is quite large and will be easy to work in. Everything seems to be made so well on this case - I like the brass standoffs used to mount the motherboard, and also the shielded cabling from the front panel for USB, Firewire and audio. Lots of attention to detail on this case and no sharp edges. The tooless drive bays are great.

With the 2 fans on the case though might be a little issue with the 5900, I have a friend that had those and they get pretty loud at full loads

Geez Fred, I hope my model isn't noisy, because it was one of the reasons I chose the ENERMAX EG465P-VE FC. The fans are temperature controlled and it's supposed to be a quiet unit. But who knows.... 8O

Here's an except from a review: http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=305

"One such example of a high quality power supply is the Enermax EG465P-VE FC. One of the highlights of this 460 watt power supply is that it automatically adjusts the fans' speeds based on the temperatures it measures. The bottom fan's speed is based on the temperature measured by a thermal sensor inside the power supply. However, the rear fan's speed is controlled by the temperature read by a thermal sensor that is attached to a short wire that can be placed anywhere it can reach to monitor the temperature at that location. Apparently, Enermax is also claiming that this is a very quiet power supply, since the word whisper appears on every side of the box. Read on to find out if this power supply can deliver serious power while keeping its cool without making a lot of noise."

brucek

**JOY DIVISION** · 25 October 2004, 17:18 Monday

Originally posted by brucek

No, it would have been nice though - but I have to say the opening area is quite large and will be easy to work in. Everything seems to be made so well on this case - I like the brass standoffs used to mount the motherboard, and also the shielded cabling from the front panel for USB, Firewire and audio. Lots of attention to detail on this case and no sharp edges. The tooless drive bays are great.

Geez Fred, I hope my model isn't noisy, because it was one of the reasons I chose the ENERMAX EG465P-VE FC. The fans are temperature controlled and it's supposed to be a quiet unit. But who knows.... 8O

Here's an except from a review: http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=305

"One such example of a high quality power supply is the Enermax EG465P-VE FC. One of the highlights of this 460 watt power supply is that it automatically adjusts the fans' speeds based on the temperatures it measures. The bottom fan's speed is based on the temperature measured by a thermal sensor inside the power supply. However, the rear fan's speed is controlled by the temperature read by a thermal sensor that is attached to a short wire that can be placed anywhere it can reach to monitor the temperature at that location. Apparently, Enermax is also claiming that this is a very quiet power supply, since the word whisper appears on every side of the box. Read on to find out if this power supply can deliver serious power while keeping its cool without making a lot of noise."

brucek

Enermax is not a problem, the 2 case fans is cool, since I have mine pointed outside serves as an exhaust from heat, and let the Swiftech/SilenX 80 9db do the CPU cooling.

**brucek** · 06 November 2004, 11:33 Saturday

Hey Guys,

I've finished loading my new computer and it works great. It wasn't an easy path to get here because I had a few problems to figure out along the way.

After I installed everything and hooked it all up and turned it on the first time, it immediately started talking to me saying "System failed CPU test". I thought I had a bad CPU (because it's pretty well impossible to put a CPU in the wrong way).
I contacted Tiger who sold the bundled ASUS A8V and Athlon 64 3400+ to me and they said I had to first contact the manufactures to ensure and determine where the fault lies.

I contacted ASUS and they immediately told me that the A8V doesn't yet support the 3400+ because the chip was just released in the 939 pin configuration and that they are presently writing a bios for it. Sure enough, when I checked their site it doesn't include the 3400+ in their list of supported processors. I thought this was simply because the site was behind on their updating the information - wrong assumption......

My plan was then to demand that Tiger exchange me the 3400+ with the 3500+. They weren't too keen on that because once a processor package is opened you can't return it to them, you have to deal with the manufacturer. I claimed that by selling this as a bundle there was an implication that they worked together. He said he'd have to check and get back to me. That was on a Friday.

On the Monday I checked the ASUS site and was suprised and pleased to see that the 3400+ had been added to the list of supported processors and they had a bios to support it. Then Tiger actually phoned me back and said they were in touch with ASUS and they assured him that the 3400+ was now supported by their motherboard. What timing eh?

Anyway, the new bios works fine. This motherboard (and no doubt all new boards are this way now) has a nice system of flashing a bios even when the processor isn't working - amazing. The old method of a DOS flash utility is also available, but requires that your CPU is working. They also have the online flash method and another crash free method where if the bios is found corrupt it goes to the floppy looking for a new bios - very impressive.

I loaded windows and all my software and it looked good so I set up the internet and went on line for a few minutes to see if it worked OK. All seemed OK so I loaded my Norton and went back on line and updated the dat files. I then did a full system scan and Norton immediately found a virus, but couldn't get rid of it. The more I tried to get rid of it and rebooted several times the worst things got. I gave up and had to format my drive and start all over with my 10 hours of loading software, except this time I loaded Norton before I went on line ...duh. Can you imagine, I was only on line a few minutes and I got a virus. I'd like to wring the necks of all the virus composers.......

Anyway, after reloading it looks great and I admit it is quite a step up from an AMD K6-350Mhz to an AMD Athlon64 3400+ ....

I didn't realize that XP didn't support SATA yet and it took me a bit of internet searching before I found I had to do the SCSI 'F6' trick with a SATA driver floppy.. Once I figured that out it was fairly smooth.

My temperatures are pretty good. I have Q-fan and Cool & Quiet running. The CPU goes between idle at about 29C and full tilt about 47C. That seems reasonable. My six fans are very quiet since they are all temperature controlled.

I did have a small mod I had to make to my CoolerMaster tooless card slot system. The clip system holds the card in tight, but to keep the PC boards from moving up and down they have small tabs on each slot that the board fits between. They didn't consider the fact that there are a few double width board around and that the tab would stop one of these double width boards from seating properly. My NVidia card is a double width board. I simply filed one of the slot tabs down and it worked great. Of course I still used screws even though there not required.

Here's a pic of the tab filed down and then one of the double width board in position.

I also include a few other pics that aren't that great since it's hard to get any resolution when you're limited to 100K size. You get the idea though.

I did load the game that came with my video card (splinter cell) and set all the graphics setups to maximum. The graphics are certainly impressive. I'm not really a gamer, but I admit to playing Half Life on my other computer (with its woefully horrible graphics system). I think I may get the new Half Life 2 when it's released in a few weeks and give it a go. Ahh, there's a hidden gamer in everyone I guess.....
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Here's where I filed the tabs down to fit the double card.
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Here's the video card in place.
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Here's the finished side view.
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Here's the front of the case. You can't see it, but the power and disk lite are a very cool blue.
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Here's a pic of the insides..I better clean up my wires a bit.
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Anyway, I hooked up the old and new computer with a LAN and I'm now transferring all my documents etc....... :roll:

brucek

Attached Files

**Andrew Pratt** · 06 November 2004, 16:43 Saturday

Very nice Bruce :T

**Kevin P** · 06 November 2004, 18:11 Saturday

Nice looking PC there Bruce. Those temps aren't bad, but if you plan on overclocking you might want a beefier HSF to keep the CPU cool.

ASUS handles the BIOS updates nicely. I don't think the other manufacturers are quite up to the level Asus is in terms of no-fail or no-CPU flashing.

Interesting how you got a virus so quickly. 8O A good rule of thumb is to enable the XP firewall before going online for the first time. Better yet, create a slipstreamed XP CD with SP2 and install using that.

**brucek** · 06 November 2004, 19:23 Saturday

XP CD with SP2 and install using that

Are you using SP2?

I have the CD for it, but I've read so many negative things about SP2, that I decided to stay at SP1 for a while. It has a very limited firewall for sure.... :E

**Kevin P** · 06 November 2004, 21:55 Saturday

I've installed SP2 on several machines so far, including my Trouncer, with no issues.

A firewall of some sort is a must nowadays with all the viruses/worms floating around. If you have broadband, a router will protect you even before you get around to setting up a software firewall.

**Trevor Schell** · 07 November 2004, 12:46 Sunday

Well Done Bruce!!
She looks fantastic!!:T

**brucek** · 07 November 2004, 16:59 Sunday

Thanks Trevor - I guess I'll have to try one of these benchmark programs you guys use and see where the 3400+ stands in comparison to the 3500+. Are they a freeware or a payware? What's a good one to use?

I guess I'll have to get up the courage to load SP2. I read articles like this and I'm a bit hesitant..

In part:

Before you even think about upgrading a machine to Service Pack 2, it’s a good idea to take a few minutes and properly prepare the machine. Yes, you can technically install SP2 without doing anything special to the machine ahead of time, but you are far less likely to experience problems if you plan ahead

URL: = http://www.windowsnetworking.com/art...ws-XP-SP2.html

brucek

Brucek's New PC..... The BruceBuster

Brucek's New PC..... The BruceBuster

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