cpu upgrade

pickarooney

I got a 1.1 Ghz Athlon, plus fan from a mate who upgraded. Is there a sure way of knowing if my motherboard (chaintech aja7/100) can take it? The chaintech website has no trace of my mobo, which is a few years old. How easy is it to change the processor and what exactly do I need in terms of paste and the like to do it properly?

aidan_walsh

Whats the exact model of the chip?

davmigil

Artic Silver paste is one of the OC's favourites. You will need methylated spirits or something similar to remove traces of old thermal paste (unless heat sink and fan still attached properly in which case you might be able to leave it alone - not sure with Athlons..).

Maybe a start would be to look in the Bios and see what fsb speeds/voltages the board is capable off and then compare that to the Athlon's specs.. What chip is installed at the moment?

Its not very hard to change a CPU (well its easy the second time you do it!).

aidan_walsh

First things first though, it all depends on what socket architecture the chip and board are... And there is very little showing up on the board in Google.

pickarooney

The current processor is a Duron 800, so the mobo is at least OK for Athlon chips.
Must check the new one for an exact name, and also check the BIOS.

Inspector Gadget

After some scratching of the (increasingly) old cranium, I seem to remember that the Athlons of that era (a 1.1GHz suggests an early revision Thunderbird part to me, I think) run at 1.75v; the Duron 800 (Spitfire part), I can tell you from personal experience, runs at 1.6v. It's doubtful that the Athlon will boot at stock clock at 1.6v (though it may at 800MHz, if you just want to test). Check for VCore adjustments in the BIOS and (possibly) on the board through jumpers.

They're both 100MHz FSB parts too, so you'll have to check your board out in case it sets the multiplier manually (that Duron uses x8, the Athlon x11). Look in the BIOS first, then hunt around for jumpers. Admittedly, most boards worked fine automatically (as some set of bridges on the CPUs themselves - L1 I think? - can report the speed to the mobo), but check in case, particularly if it's running slower than you expect on boot. (Watch the BIOS boot screens like a hawk for useful info)

Beyond that, the higher core voltage and clock speed will conspire together to make the Athlon generate a good deal more heat than the Duron (according to http://users.erols.com/chare/elec.htm you're looking at about 35W for the Duron 800, as opposed to about 55W for the Athlon 1100) so check that your Heatsink/Fan combo is up to scratch, unless one came with the Athlon.

Finally, I suspect your board is either a 7AJA2 or 7AJA2E (check out the list at http://www.chaintechusa.com/tw/eng/product_list.asp?MPSNo=13&SPSNo=12 ) - they're of the right vintage and are only a typo away in name . Use the photos, specs, etc. to try to make a positive ID.

Hope this helps,
Gadget
P.S.> davmigil, are you by any chance thinking of "Arctic Silver"???

pickarooney

Excellent answer Inspector, go-go gadget hat off to you
That is indeed my motherboard (7AJA2) and only supports up to 1GHz, so I reckon I won't risk it. I'll go for a new mobo and a 2GHz+ processor, might as well move into the 21st century

astrofool

your board should support the 1.1 fine. The kt133a chipset went all the way to 1.4ghz. What probably happened is 1ghz was the highest chip out there when they launched the board.

astrofool

in fact, look at the bios updates for it: http://www.chaintechusa.com/tw/eng/Download/dl_desc.asp?DCSNo=4&PISNo=46 it goes all the way to 2600+

dazberry

astrofool wrote:

in fact, look at the bios updates for it: http://www.chaintechusa.com/tw/eng/Download/dl_desc.asp?DCSNo=4&PISNo=46 it goes all the way to 2600+

TBH it normally depends on the PCB revision. For a board of that era, its probably ok for the Spitfire and Morgan Durons and Thunderbird Athlons (up to 1.4ghz). If it does go up to 2600+ then it can probably support the Thoroughbred Athlon XPs at 266MHz. Really need to be sure what model it is and what bios updates are available.

D.

Inspector Gadget

Hmm...

The site says that it supports 200 and 266MHz FSB (i.e. 100/133 double-pumped) processors up to (and including) Athlon XP, which would suggest that it will support all such processors (the fastest being the 2600+ at 2.133GHz (16 x 133FSB) as Astrofool indicated - the faster ones all have higher FSBs).

However, a lot of KT133A-based boards stopped far short of that - as far as I know, many ground to a halt at the 14x multiplier (again, as Astrofool indicated, if indirectly), including my long-suffering Epox 8KTA3+ under the desk at home. Considering the "slowest" Athlon XP was the 1500+, which has a 10x multiplier, you'll get that (1GHz) anyway; however, I'm not sure how much hassle it's worth considering you should be able to get that (just about, more or less) with the Duron with a little voltage-based coaxing and a HB pencil anyway, if you get my drift

For what it's worth, I don't remember any KT133/KT133A-based boards that didn't do 11x, so I'd suggest that you have a lash and see, particularly if you've got a chunk of PC133 RAM (and some thermal paste!) about the place. Have you fitted a Socket A heatsink before? If not, do a google and beware of the potential pitfalls - crushed cores, that sort of thing.

However, if you're half-thinking of investing in a chunk of RAM to put with this thing, a more modern board/CPU that supports DDR and higher FSBs (I'd say it'd be hard to find anything other than a Sempron in Socket A these days, but the low-end Socket 754 Athlon 64's look very promising from a "bang for buck" perspective right now...) - PC133 is starting to get rare (and by extension expensive) these days...

Hope this helps,
Gadget

pickarooney

Inspector Gadget wrote:

Hmm...
however, I'm not sure how much hassle it's worth considering you should be able to get that (just about, more or less) with the Duron with a little voltage-based coaxing and a HB pencil anyway, if you get my drift

Not a clue, but it sounds like fun

Not sure if it's worth the risk of damaging the mobo irreperably for the sake of a couple of hundred MHz. A new mobo/chip means new RAM as well, and most likely a new PSU, so there's a minimum of a couple of hundred quid's investment there. I'll probably stick with what I have until I can afford a new PC, sometime in the 2020s.

Inspector Gadget

It's not (usually) as drastic as that...

Generally speaking you won't do damage provided your heatsink/fan is rated high enough and you've spread the thermal paste properly (i.e. very thin layer covering entire core, but no more). All that will happen is that the machine will refuse to POST (if you've been overly optimistic, or are just above what the CPU can physically do), may boot okay but hang or start to do funny things (visual artefacts, programs crashing a lot, that sort of thing) after a while (just barely too high, or the CPU's getting too hot) or it'll just run at the new speed (no need to explain this, methinks).

This page ( http://www.motherboards.org/articlesd/how-to-guides/41_1.html ) will outline the basic principle of the "pencil trick", which should work for both of the CPUs you've got, but make sure you've got adequate cooling for long-term stability if you feel the "need for speed" .

Gadget