need an idea on a cpu upgrade

[spiritfire]

Well guys, I would have NEVER believed it in a million years, but, my problems were not from the mobo but from the cpu. As I said earlier, I originally built the system with a 1.13 T-Bird. Later, for christmas, my wife bought me the XP-2100+... I did not make the correlation at the time, but, the reboot problem I mentioned earlier started around the same time.

Anyways, this afternoon, I decided I was going to get to the bottom of the problem. I went to Staples, because of their liberal return policies... purchased a 430 Watt Antec Powersupply to swap with my Enermax 430... I got a 256MB stick of Ram (DDR PC2100/2700) to replace my 768MB of DDR PC-2100 RAM. I already had several brand new video card lying around... an ATI 9000 Raedon AGP card and an NVIDIA Geoforce MX 4000 PCI card.

Anyways, I first took everything apart and cleaned it good enough that grandma would have been proud. During the process, I decided to remove the Zalman copper H/S and fan bracket--I was never really crazy about it anyways. I reinstalled the stock heatsink and fan. I then put it all back together and whola.... nothing. It would power on, but no post... Now, I am not expert, but, I used a good wrist strap, stood on a wood floor and made sure everything was grounded and I know that I did not fry that cpu. With all the problems I had been having, it make sense now that it was going out. Course, at this time, I was not even ready to being to think that this cpu was bad...

I then began to swap things out... the only thing I could not swap was the mobo, which I was convinced was bad... thus, the thread. There are some diagnostic lights on this mobo and they would seem to hang either at the cpu being bad or a memory module. So, I installed the new module I had and got the same thing. Thinking perhaps it was video, I stuck in a brand NEW out of the box AGP card...same. Three and a half a years ago, I had purchased the top of the line (or close to it) Enermax PSU and I really did not want to believe it had crapped, but, I took it out and put in the Antec 100 dollar model I got from Staples. Nothing...

By this time, I am pissed, tired, and ready the throw the sh@% out into the front yard. But, those stinking lights kept bothering me pertaing to the cpu. So, against my better logic and because I had tried everything else, I decided to swap out the cpu. Mind ya, I have like two PII 400 cpu's that are still running strong in this house. I had never had a cpu go bad. So, it really was not high on the my list of probabilities. And, I couldn't see why simply changing out a stinking cpu H/S and Fan would mess anything up. Especially, when nothing else I touched or cleaned at the same time went mysteriously bad.

Well, I put the T=-Bird, which had been setting up in the closet on a dead mobo (really dead this time, lol) for a year and a half. Sure enough, it fired up like a caddy and I am typing on it now. And, having had to reboot the hard way for sooo long, I decided I would just give it a try. I had always assumed that something had went bad in the mobo cause back when I troubleshot that, I swapped out absolutely everything in the box expcept the mobo and cpu... Well, wouldn't ya know it, it rebooted just as pretty as you would every want to see.

So, anyways, I am sitting here wondering if I am going to notice much difference between that XP and this 1.13 T-Bird. I do very little multimedia with this machine... it is my main rig where I do all my research, writing, Internet surfing and email. I would assume that I would not see much difference. Cause, if this thing remains stable now, I am tempted to keep it and use it as long as I can. I am going to start another thread for this question, but, the only other thing I want that this machine has not given me, is dual monitor capabilities. I often have some writing proggies open ond would love to be able to do internet research on another monitor. Since most of my graphic is almost entirely web based and I NEVER play any games at all, I would not need any bells and whistles. I just want a 2/4x AGP card that will run two 19 inch monitors well.

Thanks everyone for the help. It at least got me off my duff and made me figure this thing out. I cannot for the life of me figure out what happened to the XP 2100... with the reboot problem, it might have been defective since day one. There is no burn marks anywhere...nothing that even looks like it every got the least bit hot. No missing pins... It is extremely clean. It is a retail boxed cpu so it should be under warranty so I am going to look into that.

[bombledmonk]

If you had an aftermarket heatsink on it, the warranty will be voided, but is still wouldn't hurt to try.

[spiritfire]

Originally posted by bombledmonk
If you had an aftermarket heatsink on it, the warranty will be voided, but is still wouldn't hurt to try.

Thanks allot for raining on my parade! LOL I totally forgot about that. When they come new, they have some kind of tape on them, don't they?

Oh well, I worked it to death and got great service out of it while I ran Gentoo Linux on it. Go figure. It never would run Windows worth a damn and I guess I know why now.

Hey, I have always wanted to see if these babies will burn without a H/S as fast as they say it will.... Hmmm, an old mobo, some electricity... I might just see how long they can last...:

[Nusa]

Good multimonitor support has more to do with the graphics card and OS than the CPU. I'd think what you have would serve just fine for word processing and browsing type work.