Athlon MP

[rtr]

anyone have an opinion/experience they can share?

[DJE-007]

I was testing for the government back in Dec last year with the MPX chip set, AMD was giving me a hand with the chip’s & boards, the boards where MSI, Tyan & Asus.
Out of all the boards that I recived I was impressed with the Asus

Back in Dec Tyan had bugs with SCSI cards, MSI crash lots, Asus had bad drivers for onboard sound, And USB didn't work well
I have seen that all the above have been fixed now

I have 4 unit myself with 1800’s & Asus boards and love them

I have build since Dec 2 mayor clusters with the Tyan boards and dual MP’s

The only thing is the sound from the fans to keep the CPU’s cool is a bit much

[rtr]

thanks for the input, was looking at getting 1900's on the Asus. thanks

[The Elf]

If you can afford dual MP's, you can afford water cooling. :p

[SUOrangeman]

I've been up and running with this system since May. No major problems to report. I have Debian 3 installed with an SMP kernel, but lately, I've been spending way too much time in Windows.

I'd highly suggest www.2cpu.com and its associated forums.

-SUO

[sgs521]

Originally posted by The Elf
If you can afford dual MP's, you can afford water cooling. :p

Something about running water near expensive electronics just doesn't make me feel safe. More power to anyone who does it, but don't say you weren't warned the first time a hose leaks and ruins perfectly good equipment. IMO nitrogen cooling or even just high quality low db fans would be better.

[The Elf]

Low db and good cooling are kinda contradictory, no? I've got some "Silencer" case fans and they work on perfectly sound principles. They run slower. Rather than the 38cfmish you get with a "normal" fan they push through 20cfm or so..

[mdwatts]

Asus A7M266-D
Dual AMD 1800 MP's
Volcano 7's
12 fans total
1 GB Samsung ECC/Registered
1 x 80GB
LG 32x10x40 CDRW
Sony 16x DVD
Floppy
LS-120
Promise Fasttrak TX2 IDE Raid Controller
2 x 40GB (on Promise)
Geforce3 Ti-200
Hollywood DVD+
Enermax case with 400w ps
22" Trinitron Monitor

Built this back in the spring and have not had a single problem.

[sgs521]

Originally posted by The Elf
Low db and good cooling are kinda contradictory, no? I've got some "Silencer" case fans and they work on perfectly sound principles. They run slower. Rather than the 38cfmish you get with a "normal" fan they push through 20cfm or so..
not at all, there are plenty of high rpm fans that advertise low noise.. i'm not saying they have to be whisper quiet. Good cases will mask the noise as well.

[The Elf]

It must just be me then, as every "low noise" fan I've seen was slow and didn't push a lot of air..

[The Ennead IX]

Try the YS Tech 1238's for case fans http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_YS_Tech_Fans_60.html
» Speed - 2800RPM
» Output - 125CFM
I'm using 4 of them in this case (amongst others) and although they aren't ultra quiet, they do give a reasonable trade off between sound and air moved. Any additional noise generated compared to some of the big deltas on the cpu is negligible anyway.

[The Elf]

The "silent" advertised fan on that page moves 27cfm of air. The 120 mm you list moves 125 cfm according to that page (though other internet sources showed from 105 - 135, so I wonder why there's no consensus on this..)

The silent runs somewhere between 1/4 and 1/5 as much air as the 120 mm.

Now, they are rated at 20db for the silent one, and 40db for the 120mm. 40 db is twice as loud as 30db is twice as loud as 20db, so the 120mm fan is 8 times as loud, and moves 4 to 5 times as much air.

Not really that quiet when you think about 8 times as loud.. There are marginal gains in manufacturering vs noise, but they're not much. If you need FOO cfm on the heatsink, you could choose a fan that's marginally quieter, but it won't really make much difference. If you buy an advertised quiet fan, it probably just pushes less air. Anyone wanna try to find a link and contradict me? I don't mind, really.

[The Ennead IX]

First up, my apologies to rtr for going off topic here and by way of pennance here's a link to a review of the MP1800 @ http://www.amdmb.com/article-display.php?ArticleID=127 who i've always found to give decent reviews


Second, apologies again as I was just providing a link to a decent case fan as a trade off between sound and air moved rather than saying it was a quiet one. I always think it's better to go with one big fan like that than four samll ones to move the same air. That said, if 20db=2 then twice as loud 30db = 4 and twice as loud 40 db =8. With the original value of 2 , 8/2 = 4x as loud for 5 times the air. And personally, I quite agree with you, if ou want to cool something, forget the small quiet fan, get a decent big one that shifts some air :D imho :)
The explanation for the difference in ratings is that 105cfm is the FD1225, 125 cfm is the old FD1238, they used to stock, and 135cfm is the redesigned one that was released about 6/9 months ago, they haven't got around to updating their pages properly yet so they are a bit contradictory on some things but i asked the bloke how much it moved when i bought mine as part of a case.
http://www.ystech.com.tw/FanHtml/FD1238.htm

[mcmanus69]

I built mine around the same time Watts did, and after a frustrating first few months, I finally got it all working (buggy BIOS + bad options == UGH). And suffice to say I love it. One note about cooling... I got the Tornado 7's, and they work great for cooling. It dropped my CPU down from a (rather high) 65 C to a much nicer 50 C. IMO it's well worth it, but there are some trade-offs as well... it sounds like an airplane! It's rather loud, and I've learned to just deal with it (I think I'm getting used to that high-pitch whirring...), but if you don't like case fan noise (and lots of it), get a water cooling solution.