I've got an old PC setup in my backroom. A Sempron 3000+ with a Radeon X1650 Pro AGP 8X video card. Several years ago I purchased a PC in a giant red tower from Goodwill that had all kind of crazy gauges and even a screen built into the side of the case. Over the years I sold the parts from that case but still have the motherboard, CPU, GPU and RAM. It is a Pentium 4 3.4ghz and has a X1650 Pro PCI-E video card. Just for fun I thought I'd compare it to the Sempron system to see which one performs better and by how much. The P4 system doesn't have a cooler since I removed it years ago as it was a really nice one.
It is a LGA 775 which has four holes around the CPU for mounting the cooler. I have an old Dell Dimension 3000 that is a Pentium 4 and it also has the four holes around the CPU for the cooler. It is a pretty large cooler so this will work great right? Wrong! Apparently the space between the mounting holes on a 775 are farther apart than a 478 so it doesn't come close to mounting on it. Really all I want to do on it is run a few benchmarks and compare it to the Sempron just for fun. Would it be alright to just sit the computer on it's side and simply just sit the cooler on the CPU for a temporary solution? I have a weight that I could sit on it if need be to give it better contact with the CPU.
I'd like to actually have this computer in a usable condition so I wouldn't be against just buying a cooler for it but the most I'd want to spend is $10 tops. The ones I've seen are pretty pricey. So if someone could point me to a cooler that would be substantial enough for a P4 3.4ghz for cheap I'd appreciate it. I recall those P4s as being known for running very hot so I'm guessing I'll need a halfway decent heatsink to keep it at a usable temperature.
You may be asking yourself why? Why even bother doing this? Idk I find it fun and there isn't much else to do right now so why not?
I don’t see why you couldn’t just sit it on top as a temporary solution. Obviously I wouldn’t go overclocking the thing, but just to get it running for some testing, it should make enough contact to be alright.
If you wanted to buy one, a quick Google search showed me a couple on Newegg priced between $12-20 for some basic ones. Considering the age of the thing, it’s not like you need a heatsink tower or anything.
No issue at all just sitting the cooler on the CPU. depends on the thermal paste you're using.
I've personally found that the really cheap and really expensive stuff forms a tight enough bond that you don't even need any clamps at all...
If you can put the thermal paste on the CPU, and then put the cooler on and then pick up the motherboard, including RAM without ANY clips on the cooler, then your paste is good enough just on its own.
I have a board ATM using the cheapest paste I have (Halzyne tub) and I was picking the board up by the cpu cooler and using it before I even noticed that the cpu cooler retention clip was broken!
But as for using a P4... Cal, you've got it all wrong! in those days AMD chips were the better ones!
If I should Die Hard Arcade before I Alan Wake.
PREY the Lords of Lore my Soul Calibur to Take-Two Interactive.
ian wrote: ↑Fri Apr 17, 2020 6:15 pm
But as for using a P4... Cal, you've got it all wrong! in those days AMD chips were the better ones!
Lol it just happened to be what I had laying around! I would guess that the 3.4ghz P4 is going to be faster than the 1.8ghz Sempron 3000. Plus the motherboard itself it more up to date than the one the Sempron is running on.
We may never know though because finding the drivers for the motherboard has been a major headache! Usually any old ass motherboard I type in on google I can immediately find every driver for it. Not this one though for some reason. It is a Foxconn 915A03-P-8EKRS. So far after hours of searching I was able to find the audio driver. No ethernet or chipset driver though. I just have to one the one obscure motherboard that doesn't have the drivers easily available online.
The only reason I was able to find the audio driver is because I found a russian website with the following info about the board
ian wrote: ↑Fri Apr 17, 2020 6:15 pm
But as for using a P4... Cal, you've got it all wrong! in those days AMD chips were the better ones!
Lol it just happened to be what I had laying around! I would guess that the 3.4ghz P4 is going to be faster than the 1.8ghz Sempron 3000. Plus the motherboard itself it more up to date than the one the Sempron is running on.
We may never know though because finding the drivers for the motherboard has been a major headache! Usually any old ass motherboard I type in on google I can immediately find every driver for it. Not this one though for some reason. It is a Foxconn 915A03-P-8EKRS. So far after hours of searching I was able to find the audio driver. No ethernet or chipset driver though. I just have to one the one obscure motherboard that doesn't have the drivers easily available online.
The only reason I was able to find the audio driver is because I found a russian website with the following info about the board
I've tried a couple of 8100C and 8110s drivers but no luck.
Have you tried using 3DPChip and 3DPNet to find the driver? If you’ve never used that software, pay attention during install as it will try to install junk software if you don’t check or uncheck certain boxes. But 3DPNet is a a 1GB file that contains nearly every network driver known and will install the right one. And after that, Chip will hopefully find the rest.
melancholy wrote: ↑Mon Apr 20, 2020 12:29 am
Have you tried using 3DPChip and 3DPNet to find the driver? If you’ve never used that software, pay attention during install as it will try to install junk software if you don’t check or uncheck certain boxes. But 3DPNet is a a 1GB file that contains nearly every network driver known and will install the right one. And after that, Chip will hopefully find the rest.
I'll try those out. I've seen a lot of those programs that claim to find your missing drivers but they all looked like junk. I'll give 3DPChip and 3DPNet a try. If they work out they could be useful tools in the future for finding odd drivers.
melancholy wrote: ↑Mon Apr 20, 2020 12:29 am
Have you tried using 3DPChip and 3DPNet to find the driver? If you’ve never used that software, pay attention during install as it will try to install junk software if you don’t check or uncheck certain boxes. But 3DPNet is a a 1GB file that contains nearly every network driver known and will install the right one. And after that, Chip will hopefully find the rest.
I'll try those out. I've seen a lot of those programs that claim to find your missing drivers but they all looked like junk. I'll give 3DPChip and 3DPNet a try. If they work out they could be useful tools in the future for finding odd drivers.
Most of them are junk. The difference with this software and those ‘driver updaters’ is that this piece of software simply finds the drivers online. You still have to download and install them, but at least you will know what they are. It doesn’t sit in the background hounding you about updates and paying you for premium services.
As I said, though, this software makes its money by installing other junk on setup, so make sure to pay attention. Even if you don’t use 3DPChip, it’s useful to keep a copy of 3DPNet on a flash drive just to quickly get the internet up and running on older computers. I keep it and a copy of Ninite on a drive just for the purpose of quick setup.
I downloaded 3DPNet with no problem, haven't tried it out yet. But when I try to download 3DPChip in Firefox it is identified it as containing a virus or malware. I'm guessing that is because of the junk it is bundled with during installation?
Calavera wrote: ↑Tue Apr 21, 2020 1:13 pm
I downloaded 3DPNet with no problem, haven't tried it out yet. But when I try to download 3DPChip in Firefox it is identified it as containing a virus or malware. I'm guessing that is because of the junk it is bundled with during installation?
Probably. 3DPNet doesn’t have an installer, which is why it downloads fine. 3DPChip does have an installer, but I just looked and there is a portable version that I bet will download fine and not have that crap.
I tried them both out and they work great! Very useful programs, I'm surprised I'd never heard of them before. To quote Kindergarten Cop, Thanks for the tip.
