buckeye wrote:

Decided to ditch the Athlon route for my XP rig and snagged a Intel D945GCCR micro atx mobo with a core 2 duo E8400 3ghz cpu. Ca […]
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Decided to ditch the Athlon route for my XP rig and snagged a Intel D945GCCR micro atx mobo with a core 2 duo E8400 3ghz cpu. Can anyone help me with these questions?

1. Does this cpu have heat issues? Would the stock cooler be ok if using a micro atx case less airflow?
2. Using a small case, will that cause problems fitting a single video card? Say 7900 GTX or GTX 280?
3. Can I use a modern PSU or get something "period correct"?

Thanks for any input!

1. You should be fine with stock cooler. I'm guessing you don't want to overclock since you chose an Intel board. 😀
2. Without dimensions, we have no way of knowing. But my gut says you should be fine.
3. I'd use something modern. Not much has changed PSU-wise since the C2D days, and you want your PSU to be modern and good quality. In this case, "period correct" might mean "lots of wear and tear" on a component you don't want to have problems with.

I don't think that board is going to work with that CPU:

http://processormatch.intel.com/Processors/Co … ntName=d945gccr

The 945GC chipset is one of the first that supported Core 2 Duo CPUs, so unless this one is updated somehow beyond the normal specs, it won't support anything beyond the first generation low end Core 2 chips with 800Mhz FSB. The E8400 is actually one of the last generation with a 1333Mhz FSB. You'll need a much newer board to support it.

Crap! thanks for pointing that out. What I get for getting in a hurry, now need to choose which one to replace - mobo or cpu.

Nice catch, Ozzuneoj!

The E4700 should be able to run any XP-era games fine if paired with a good GPU, but it would be nice to have something a little closer to an E8400. I have something in between the two (Xeon 3070, which is equivalent to an E6700) and I'm happy with it paired with an 8800GTX.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

The 945GC chipset is one of the first that supported Core 2 Duo CPUs, so unless this one is updated somehow beyond the normal specs, it won't support anything beyond the first generation low end Core 2 chips with 800Mhz FSB. The E8400 is actually one of the last generation with a 1333Mhz FSB. You'll need a much newer board to support it.

It seems that the 'Intel D945GCCR' board has a worse support with the chipset 965GC. When i compare it for example to: ConRoe1333 from Asrock.

The last rig from my brother, it's a ConRoe1333 with 945GC A2 Chipset and a E7500 installed. The support is up to the X6800 or E8500.
http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/ConRoe1333-D66 … 20R1.0/?cat=CPU