The reason I said 350 watt is because I am hearing horror stories from people running the 1.4GHZ with several cards/drives and a 300 watt unit
I could not agree with you more, the Athlon C Draws a minimum of 60 Watts and a Maximum of 72 Watts. With just a 300 Watt Power Supply (remember that is the max, power supplies do have a +/- tolerance in power, voltage, and amperage output), you could end up with problems if you have more than one CD-ROM, a SCSI Drive (10,000+RPM's!!), and multiple Cards, including modern video cards which have a hefty draw on the PS as well. I am not even using an Athlon and I have an Enermax 350 Watt Power Supply (then again I have about 8 - 10 different fans in my comp). A lot of problems in a computer are caused because of overlooking many features that improve stability such as:
A) Cooling - One of the most overlooked things, the Athlon
draws 60-72 Watts of Power, where does it go? HEAT. You
need to come up with a really good thermal solution, do
not use shims. Remember, to use a good thermal paste, a
solid copper/copper-embeded heatsink, a CPU Fan with a
good CFM and RPM rating. Make sure your case can move
air efficiently, use a large case, rounded IDE cables,
Case fans with a good CFM and RPM rating, a Power Supply
with 2 fans on it to suck air out of your case and vent
it out of the back and a plastic vent to put incoming
air directly onto your cpu. You can also do some case
mods <A HREF="http://www.overclockers.com" target="_new">www.overclockers.com
</A> and if your worried about noise, use low db rated
products that still move air preety well, you can check
out the products at <A HREF="http://www.quietpc.com" target="_new">www.quietpc.com</A>.
B) Power Supplies - The ones with more Wattage and better
+/- tolerances such as <A HREF="http://www.enermax.com.tw" target="_new">Enermax</A> are a necessity to ensure
that everything is getting the power it needs).
C) The Brand of Ram you use - a lot of people pass on good
name ram due to the price, but there is a huge
difference in using a good brand that provides speed and
stability, I recommend <A HREF="http://www.crucial.com" target="_new">Crucial</A>, they seem to provide
high-quality SDRAM and DDR Ram, <A HREF="http://www.corsairmicro.com" target="_new">Corsair</A> also makes high
quality DDR Ram. For RDRAM, I would use [www.hea.com]Hyundai[/url].
D) The Motherboard Brand and Chipset - now unfortunetly for
AMD there are not many viable solutions to that, preety
much all boards use the ALI, SIS or VIA. Current boards
that use the AMD760 is just the Northbridge, the
Southbridge uses a really shitty VIA VT82C686B which was
also used with the VIA KT133A. <A HREF="http://www.asus.com" target="_new">Asus</A> and <A HREF="http://www.abit.com.tw" target="_new">Abit</A> have
always provided the best boards, but personally the
reason why I have not upgraded my system is, because
there has not yet been a more stable chipset than the
440BX and therefore I am staying with it until I find
something better. I have left my system on since I last
upgraded and have never crashed at all, I like to know
that I can depend on my system.
I for one am waiting for the new line of products to hit the market such as:
- AMD Athlon 4
- Intel Pentium 3 Tualatin
- Intel Pentium 4 Northwood
- nVidia nForce Chipset
- Asus TUCSL-C
- Asus A7N266
- Abit KG7-Raid
- DDR Support for the P4
- PC2400 @ CAS2 to become industry standards
I for one will not make any judgement on these products based on the stats alone, I nver have and never will. When the Intel Pentium was released everyone raved about it ahead of time as they did with the P4 saying it is revalutionary, when it came out it barely performed better than a 486. I waited to get a couple in the store before I made any judgements and found it to be correct, but also realized there was not much software/hardware that took advantage of the Pentiums new instruction at the time and companies quickly did so, and the Pentium became a great success. I will say that these new products are going to be exciting and I hope that they will meet my expectations of stability so I can upgrade my system. I hope I was of help (yes, I know I derived from the topic, but it really all relates).
My System: <A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?rigid=9417" target="_new">http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?rigid=9417</A>
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram