Well I finally went and did it..

[KvHagedorn]

New system, most of which was ordered today:

Enlight 7237 case w/340w PS
Epox EP-8K3A+ Motherboard
AMD AthlonXP1800+ OEM
Swiftech MCX462 Heatsink with a Sunon 80mm 50cfs fan
512MB Corsair XMS3000 DDR
80GB Seagate BarracudaIV 7200rpm
Plextor PlexCombo DVD/CDRW
Sony Floppy
3Com 905CX-TXNM PCI 10/100 Network Card

and..

a MATROX PARHELIA 128

Now certain of you can stop wondering when the hell I'm gonna stop talking about it and finally get the damned thing.

[DuRaNgO]

You should be very happy together

[Tempest]

Great, keep us (me) updated on how the 8K3A+ does with the Parhelia... Shouldn't be a problem though, the AGP bus can't be all that noisy since even my Marvel G400-TV runs happily on it with AGP 4x and all performance options maxed

[KvHagedorn]

That's good to hear, Tempest.. Actually almost got the Asus A7V333, but there were so many good reviews, I thought I'd give the Epox a try.

[Protege]

How do you find the Parhelia?

[KvHagedorn]

Haven't received any of that stuff yet.. Tuesday is my scheduled delivery day for the P.. everything else was ordered Friday. I'll let you know.

[Alfie]

Epox boards are good,they seem to be a little more mature than others and was the only Super 7 board that I encountered that could handle agp 4x.
Very reliable,easy to set up and sometimes don't boot at first start,if that happens to you,just try again!
That was my experience with them,why?Haven't a clue!

[HaloFX]

Wow! That fast of a turn around, Where did you order your P from???

[KvHagedorn]

Preordered it from the Matrox Store an hour after they started taking preorders.

[Dogbert]

I did it too !!!

Just ordered my new toy:

Case: Enermak FS-710B with 3 fans and an Enermax 350W ps
Mobo: Asus A7V333-E-Audio
Mem: 2x Transcend 512 333Mhz DDR
CPU: Athlon XP 1800
HDD: Maxtor 740X-6L 80GB
DVD: Pioneer 116/2
CD-R: Plextor 40x12x40 IDE
Net: 3com 3c905c-tx

Extras:
Thermaltake VOLCANO 7+
Arctic Silver II Thermal Grease
Easy Disk USB 64Mb


Question: What should I use, the onboard sound or my SB Live! (original, not 5.1) Platinum ?

[KvHagedorn]

Sweet Chip!

This AGOIA core AthlonXP (green package, week 20, 02) is doing pretty well. It's rated an 1800+, but I'm now running it at 1754MHz (2100+) with air cooling and seems pretty stable booting into Windows and getting kicked around a bit. Now running both CPU and memory busses at 167MHz and the CPU multiplier at x10.5 with a voltage setting of 1.85. Got it to post at 1837MHz (2200+, 167x11) with 1.9 volts, but haven't tried that in Windows yet. Temps are ranging around 44-47 degrees c right now under normal loads, which is really not too bad at this speed. For anyone who's interested in unlocking their XP, the $12 unlocking kit from highspeedpc works just fine.

Still wrestling with a few issues, and haven't tried everything out yet, but so far, so good.

If anyone is interested, the Swiftech cooler is absolutely super. The only caveat I would offer is that you must get the standoffs tight against the motherboard so they will not turn with the screws when you tighten them down and then want to pull them out again. I had poor results with the nylon nuts provided, so I used nylon washers and zinc nuts instead, applying a drop of Loctite Tite'n to the threads before tightening them up. Take care not to crush the motherboard, but get the nuts good and tight and you won't have to remove said motherboard whenever you want to take the heatsink off. Be sure to use a good non-conductive shim (the purple one available from highspeedpc is the one I used.. leaves plenty of space around the bridges) and Arctic Silver 3 and that's all you will need (plus a great deal of patience.)

[ALBPM]

What processor Temps are you getting with the Swifty????

Paul

[KvHagedorn]

Well, after a burn-in loop with SiSoft Sandra and running the Reef Demo for 5 hours straight, I've settled on 167Mhzx10 as the fastest stable solution. Couldn't get anything to mess up at that speed, even when looping the Sandra Multimedia bench (saw a max temp of 53.5 during this punishment @ 1670, 1.85v.) It runs fine for extended periods at 1754 when I juice it up to 1.9v, but just produces too much heat during the most grueling tests. Perhaps a Delta would cool it, but I have enough noise here as it is.

BTW, Parhelia is doing fine on this board. I purposely did not use any of the onboard fan headers, however, and you will notice the speeds to which I overclocked the fsb keep the AGP and PCI busses at spec. I want it fast, but I also want it stable (and reasonably quiet).

[KvHagedorn]

Well, just one more update.. after burning in for a day or two at 1.85v, I backed the voltage down to the default 1.75 again and threw all sorts of crap at the CPU.. looped the Sandra Multimedia/Cache and Memory Benches then put on Neverwinter Nights and sent the room into a fast spin for awhile.. no problems at all.. the CPU temp never got above 49.5, even when doing multiple Multimedia benches back to back. Temperature at idle is 41c. With the voltage and temps as they are, I feel like I actually have a 2000+ here now rather than an 1800+.

Since so many here have this same processor, I'd be interested to hear how the rest of you have done with them.