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"AMD Processor names....."

I'm getting a new Motherboard, an ABIT KT-7A RAID, it says that it can handle AMD Athlons and Durons. I saw an AMD Thunderbird. Is a Thunderbird the same as an Athlon or Duron?

Ah-ha, i see. I'll post it in a seperate thread to get their attention!

The board only goes up to 1.2 with the current bios, a bios update will see it go higher.

The board only goes up to 1.2 Gig.

It would be a good idea for someone at SR to let you know what certification the fan has, you don't want to upgrade to a 1.4 gig chip and have it fried because the fan wasn't good enough.

I'm going for a 1.1 Gig chip, I was going to get the heatsink and fan from SR. It hasn't got a rating for it.

My current PSU was the one i got with my AMD K6-2 400. I will get a new one at some point, but i was hoping the surrent one would last for a couple of weeks.

I'll get a new one straight away as i'm not going to risk it blowing and knackering my new CPU and Motherboard.

Thanks for you help everyone!

You will get away with running it on you 230watt PSU, only if it is on the AMD recommended list, as far as generics PSU's go 300watt minimum. Even then if it is of poor quality or faulty your machine will turn on, but then turn off fairly quickly. This is because the PSus have a thermal cut out when they get too hot, so that they don't explode and possibly spike your hardware, but if you try to get too much out of a PSU, you can say goodbye to all the hardware connected when it decides to give up.

As far as cooling goes, you will just need a basic Athlon Thunderbird fan, unless you want to overclock (can be done, but not recommended until you know exactly what you are doing). As far as the temperatures go, AMDs processors are fairly cool. Your average Athlon runs at 25-39 degrees, whereas P3s run at an average of 42-55 degrees. When you get a fan just make sure it is certified at as high a CPU speed as possible so that you don't need to buy a new one if you upgrade on the same motherboard.

You will need a 300w PSU and the cooling fan for an Athlon spend the extra few pounds and get a good one as they do get very hot.

Sorry, You can run it on a 200 but it will crash as it will not be getting enough power, so get a 300W PSU.

R

There are two types of the rain mother board. One which will use the faster DDR RAM and another that won't. The one that uses the ddr ram is a little quicker but the memory is more expensive.

Go for a standard one. As for processor depends on what you want to pay. Thunderbirds are faster but more expensive (although there still not much!)

To use Raid you have to have two HDD's, but it really isn't worth using raid unless you have really important stuff on your PC that you can't afford to have go down. What Raid does basically is mirror the other drive and so if for whatever reason it fails the other one will kick and continue. so it really isn't needed in a home PC, it's big companies and Banks that would use it.

Hope that helps, if not ask a question!

Ryan

Bonus, would it be possible to run the motherboard and cpu on my existing 230W PSU?

I have a graphics card, sound card and modem.

It wouldn't be permanent, just for a couple of weeks. Also, what about cooling? Would i need a new fan?

Thanks.