38V on the +5v line? Interesting! You could put that PSU to use in a super Athlon XP rig 😜

I wasn't aware there were actually mobo's that did support Cedar Mill and not the Cores..interesting!
I was under the impression such motherboards didn't exist, though I never actually did any research on that subject.

I have an older system waiting here for a cheap Core CPU to find it's way into my home which I could use to replace the Cedar Mill currently in it.

I hope your system has enough airflow though (the rear case exhaust fan won't be of much help I guess), but I reckon since the graphics card exhausts hot air to the outside itself (or at least part of it) that heat isn't an issue with your build?

I have the same CPU cooler you have on an Athlon 64, but I found it to be noisy when running at full speed, so I connected it to a 7v adapter. How's the noise of your Zalman CPU cooler?

Very nice build I'd say, especially when considering you build it mostly using spare parts! 😀

@badmojo, I never understood why people disliked the pentium 4 either. The early pentium 4's were a bit crappy considering that the pentium 3 1.4ghz was faster than a pentium 4 1.4ghz but once they started moving into the 3Ghz onwards they were quite fast for their time. My socket 478 pentium 4 3.4ghz combined with an ati x800 pro runs most games on max settings made around that era.

They do get a little hot but that's nothing a decent cooler can't fix. I use a thermaltake tr2-m12.

Nice find mate 😀

I found an identical board in a dumpster a few years ago, also rev 1.x.
The board I found was badly scratched so the tracers to one of the memory channels were broken.
I did build a system with it and a 3.4 GHz Prescott 550, 2 gb memory and some old Fire GL card.
It is now a surf box in the coffee-room at work 😀 (still with one memory channel).

Performance wise it dosnt matter if its a Prescott 5xx, 6xx or A Cedar Mill 6x1.
They perform more or less identically at the same clock speed.
But the Cedar Mill do run cooler!
I do not own any Cedar Mills and I just missed an auction with 10 of them with a buy out price of ~8 Euro + 5 Euro shipping.
When I decided that I actually wanted them someone else had bought them.

I like the video card. I have a few Geforce 8800 GTS 512 but no first generation 8800 card.

As a P4 heretic myself all I can say is "nice build". And silver aluminum cases with clean minimalist lines like the Lian Li are simply the best for showing off gear IMO!

I have a similar rig: P4-3.6/7900GTX running XP/W98se with modded drivers and the RLOEW patch. A CoolerMaster Hyper 101/FHS keeps the space heater plenty cool.

tincup wrote:

As a P4 heretic myself all I can say is "nice build". And silver aluminum cases with clean minimalist lines like the Lian Li are simply the best for showing off gear IMO!

I have a similar rig: P4-3.6/7900GTX running XP/W98se with modded drivers and the RLOEW patch. A CoolerMaster Hyper 101/FHS keeps the space heater plenty cool.

How is the RLOEW patch? Is it worth getting? And do you have to pay every time you use the patch?
Sorry if I'm being a bit offtopic here 😊

@Tetrium and regarding the airflow - I'm no expert on these things but it seems to pump a lot of hot air out if that means anything! The cade has 2 80mm fans at the front, one at the back, the PSU fan, and of course the CPU and GPU fans. I've just assumed that's enough, but you're it's probably worth checking some temps.

That large zalman cooler, which is made from one large chunk of metal split into all those leaves, has a little dial included in its wiring - doesn't yours have one of those? The fan is loud at full speed but I've dialed it down to ~3/4 and it's fine now.

Nice to hear from some other P4 heretics! I played some DOOM 3 on this bad boy last night and had a great time with it.

badmojo wrote:

@Tetrium and regarding the airflow - I'm no expert on these things but it seems to pump a lot of hot air out if that means anything! The cade has 2 80mm fans at the front, one at the back, the PSU fan, and of course the CPU and GPU fans. I've just assumed that's enough, but you're it's probably worth checking some temps.

That large zalman cooler, which is made from one large chunk of metal split into all those leaves, has a little dial included in its wiring - doesn't yours have one of those? The fan is loud at full speed but I've dialed it down to ~3/4 and it's fine now.

Nice to hear from some other P4 heretics! I played some DOOM 3 on this bad boy last night and had a great time with it.

I was surprised mine didn't come with one, it only had this standard 3-pin connector as far as I can remember. Maybe it was second hand or something, I don't remember, but I managed to hammer it into place anyhow 😁

It would be a good idea to see what your temps are. Remember that heat can cause all kinds of problems (from occasional crashes to parts that have a shortened lifespan because of the hot environment they operate in, in particular your graphics card and PSU may be affected).
It's not dramatic or anything, but it does have it's averse effects.

You "could" consider cutting away the "grill"-type-o thing in the back of your computercase so the rear exhaust fan can remove more air from the case. One 8cm fan isn't a lot for the graphics card and the CPU you have in your rig.

I think I'd prefer the innards to fry that chop bits out of the case - I have a bit of a case fetish. 😊

I'll definitely keep an eye on the temps though.

Sorry for the off-topic, but responding to Tetrium:

Tetrium wrote:

How is the RLOEW patch? Is it worth getting? And do you have to pay every time you use the patch?
Sorry if I'm being a bit offtopic here 😊

Check my thread on the subject:
Planning new W98SE build

Easy - you buy the RLOWE patch from Mr Lowe once and that's it - use it as often as you need/wish. The combination of modded nV drivers with the patch got XP and W98se playing nice together for me - YMMV.

Nice find badmojo. It's amazing to see what others will just simply throw away without even thinking twice (I know most just want to upgrade, but at least donate the old rigs to someone so they can be put to good use again 😒 ).

I'm also a P4 heretic; I used one as my main rig for almost 2 years before I finally upgraded to a Core i5 build. I didn't throw mine away though; instead, I rebuilt it into a fast Win98SE rig (the thread is here). Unfortunately the mobo has a case of bad caps, so I'm using it as little as possible until I can find someone that can do the recapping job for me (I'm unable to do it myself). Nevertheless, I have seen what it can do, and am very pleased with the results 😀 .

I like that 8800GTX. What a best of c ard!

For me the Core 2 Duo is THE DX9 / Windows XP platform. I remember how awesome my E6600 system was. Or a Phenom II / Athlon II Platform, they are also very good.

Personally I would go for a P4 system when it comes to AGP cards. While AMD was a bit stronger during this era, I want to stick with Intel, even if its a bit slower.

I found that games like Doom or FEAR don't have too many issues with drivers, in general most DX9 games don't, and can easily bring fast machines to its knees when details are cranked up.

P4 fully deserved it's reputation. It was a technological dead end for Intel, much like the 80186 was. The early parts couldn't outrun the Tualatin they replaced on a clock for clock basis and the later ones generated way too much heat and couldn't scale as well as Intel had hoped or as well as comparable AMD chips. When they finally got to the end of the road Intel replaced them with the Pentium M (which evolved into the Core architecture) which was basically a continuation of where they left off with the last Tualatin adding in the knowledge they gained in the intervening years with the P4. Everything Intel makes today has a stronger lineage going back to P-III than P4.

sliderider wrote:

P4 fully deserved it's reputation. It was a technological dead end for Intel, much like the 80186 was. The early parts couldn't outrun the Tualatin they replaced on a clock for clock basis and the later ones generated way too much heat and couldn't scale as well as Intel had hoped or as well as comparable AMD chips. When they finally got to the end of the road Intel replaced them with the Pentium M (which evolved into the Core architecture) which was basically a continuation of where they left off with the last Tualatin adding in the knowledge they gained in the intervening years with the P4. Everything Intel makes today has a stronger lineage going back to P-III than P4.

Even though I agree with you that Netburst was a technically dead end and I used to agree that all P4's were crap, I somewhat changed my mind after I heard good things about Northwood. So I build myself a Northwood 3.2GHz rig and I have to say that it was a very decent platform. I still intend to rebuild it (got all the parts in a kiwibox atm, all it needs is a case and a PSU). Northwood uses only slightly more power then a fast Athlon XP and the cooling solutions are better because of the mounting mechanism. I don't like the LGA775 Netburst CPU's though because they consume so much power (except Cedar Mill that is, which imo is decent). So far s478 hyperthreading Northwood rigs seems very decent.

But because I changed my mind only fairly recently, I kinda missed out on the big trashing wave of s478 parts. They are still available but much less then LGA775 and 754/939 parts in The Netherlands. Also the really good boards (supporting Netburst and 4 DIMM slots) are being sold for not so cheap anymore and the ones that are sold for cheap get bought quite rapidly. Also I noticed top of the line AGP cards (GF 6800 and equivalent Radeon parts) are rising in selling value (not by much but it is noticeable), the major dip seems to have passed so now is a good time to stock up on these parts before they become even more expensive.

Tetrium wrote:

So far s478 hyperthreading Northwood rigs seems very decent.

You get SSE3 support and 1MB L2 cache with a Prescott, you know ... 😀

Space Cowboy wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

So far s478 hyperthreading Northwood rigs seems very decent.

You get SSE3 support and 1MB L2 cache with a Prescott, you know ... 😀

SSE3 is nice, but the 1M cache more or less only sorta compensates for it's longer pipeline and makes it run hotter then a similarly clocked Northwood.
Both perform different depending on what's run on them, but overall they are about equally good (even when taking SSE3 and the larger cache into account)...except that Preshot runs hotter.

Personally I'd prefer a Northwood over a similarly clocked Prescott 😀
If I really need SSE3 then I prefer to use Athlon 64 instead.

One of the delights of retro gaming and PC building is that it's not the tradeoff between price and performance that it always is on the leading edge. You're free to slide up and down the performance scale, platforms and hardware, at whim, dialing in whatever capabilities you care to, free of dollar concerns [except for the exceptional parts], and delve into any nook that beckons. Purism and ruthless analysis is not necessarily a virtue, and perhaps even a drawback when putting these rigs together. Years later we are able to draw on a tool kit far vaster than anything we originally had at our disposal and the toughest choices are usually compatibility issues and matching system specs with targeted games.

This P4 discussion is a case in point. In it's day it was clearly a part wanting from a design standpoint. I jumped on the AMD bandwagon when it was clear that horsepower was a good deal cheaper per pound, and the Athlon had a racer's build while the P4 came across as a graceless technical kludge, the "station wagon" or "mini-van" of the CPU world. But freed from the constraints and demands that rendered P4's pedestrian qualities a drawback, now it's fun to take the old crate out for a spin - hey - it drives pretty good after all and get's the job done! So in spite of what may be called design inelegance, it's legitimate motive power for retro setups conceived within it's performance and feature envelope - and that's pretty cool in itself... Certainly there's no shame in having one in the stable... besides, my 3.6 Prescott does double duty when the furnace is on the fritz;)

Tetrium wrote:

sliderider wrote:

P4 fully deserved it's reputation. It was a technological dead end for Intel, much like the 80186 was. The early parts couldn't outrun the Tualatin they replaced on a clock for clock basis and the later ones generated way too much heat and couldn't scale as well as Intel had hoped or as well as comparable AMD chips. When they finally got to the end of the road Intel replaced them with the Pentium M (which evolved into the Core architecture) which was basically a continuation of where they left off with the last Tualatin adding in the knowledge they gained in the intervening years with the P4. Everything Intel makes today has a stronger lineage going back to P-III than P4.

Even though I agree with you that Netburst was a technically dead end and I used to agree that all P4's were crap, I somewhat changed my mind after I heard good things about Northwood. So I build myself a Northwood 3.2GHz rig and I have to say that it was a very decent platform. I still intend to rebuild it (got all the parts in a kiwibox atm, all it needs is a case and a PSU). Northwood uses only slightly more power then a fast Athlon XP and the cooling solutions are better because of the mounting mechanism. I don't like the LGA775 Netburst CPU's though because they consume so much power (except Cedar Mill that is, which imo is decent). So far s478 hyperthreading Northwood rigs seems very decent.

But because I changed my mind only fairly recently, I kinda missed out on the big trashing wave of s478 parts. They are still available but much less then LGA775 and 754/939 parts in The Netherlands. Also the really good boards (supporting Netburst and 4 DIMM slots) are being sold for not so cheap anymore and the ones that are sold for cheap get bought quite rapidly. Also I noticed top of the line AGP cards (GF 6800 and equivalent Radeon parts) are rising in selling value (not by much but it is noticeable), the major dip seems to have passed so now is a good time to stock up on these parts before they become even more expensive.

The problem with technological dead ends is that it wasn't just Intel that went down the dead end, they pulled millions of users down that road with them and the users ended up paying the price for Intel's shortsightedness. They made P4 a "success" when it didn't deserve to be. More people should have been buying Athlons during that time period instead which would have given AMD the money to make Athlon even better than it turned out to be. Maybe we could have avoided the Bulldozer disaster altogether if AMD had a bigger warchest with which to develop future designs.

tincup wrote:

One of the delights of retro gaming and PC building is that it's not the tradeoff between price and performance that it always is on the leading edge. You're free to slide up and down the performance scale, platforms and hardware, at whim, dialing in whatever capabilities you care to, free of dollar concerns [except for the exceptional parts], and delve into any nook that beckons. Purism and ruthless analysis is not necessarily a virtue, and perhaps even a drawback when putting these rigs together. Years later we are able to draw on a tool kit far vaster than anything we originally had at our disposal and the toughest choices are usually compatibility issues and matching system specs with targeted games.

This P4 discussion is a case in point. In it's day it was clearly a part wanting from a design standpoint. I jumped on the AMD bandwagon when it was clear that horsepower was a good deal cheaper per pound, and the Athlon had a racer's build while the P4 came across as a graceless technical kludge, the "station wagon" or "mini-van" of the CPU world. But freed from the constraints and demands that rendered P4's pedestrian qualities a drawback, now it's fun to take the old crate out for a spin - hey - it drives pretty good after all and get's the job done! So in spite of what may be called design inelegance, it's legitimate motive power for retro setups conceived within it's performance and feature envelope - and that's pretty cool in itself... Certainly there's no shame in having one in the stable... besides, my 3.6 Prescott does double duty when the furnace is on the fritz;)

Exactly, beautiful writeup Tincup! 😁

I only gave Northwood a try after reading opinions about Northwood written on this very forum and at the same time was given the old system of my sister, which happened to be an Intel s478 board with a Northwood 3.2GHz. It remained in my stash for a while until my LAN rigs were completed and using spare parts I had laying around, gave it a spin and I liked it 😀
But the thing does need good cooling (requiring a case with good ventilation) a good graphics card to be able to use Northwood's power (which again needs to be cooled properly) and a good PSU. Switching the Northwood for a Prescott will not change anything performance wise except that I'd need to get even better cooling and a better PSU, which costs money...money for no gain at all. Also the rig will become a bit more noisy due to the better airflow required for Prescott. 😜

I think I'll give my s478 Prescott a spin only if my Northwood 3.0GHz is dead (I tried to build another Northwood but the CPU+board wouldn't post, so it's either the board or the CPU but I had no other parts to switch around with so I was never sure which part was at fault and it was a long time ago so can't remember what the issue exactly was) and the HP s478 board I got last Friday is working and I get a decent PSU for the thing.
I'm kinda waiting for a good deal for a good quality PSU (preferably 350W or more) and if I see such a deal, I'll buy another batch just like I did last time 🤣

sliderider wrote:

The problem with technological dead ends is that it wasn't just Intel that went down the dead end, they pulled millions of users down that road with them and the users ended up paying the price for Intel's shortsightedness. They made P4 a "success" when it didn't deserve to be. More people should have been buying Athlons during that time period instead which would have given AMD the money to make Athlon even better than it turned out to be. Maybe we could have avoided the Bulldozer disaster altogether if AMD had a bigger warchest with which to develop future designs.

True and when I first heard of the Netburst architecture, it kinda sounded like this to me:
Intel: Well, we made this great new CPU! And to make it clock higher more easily we'll just make the CPU dumber by lengthening the pipelines!
Sure it performs more crappy then a similarly clocked Pentium 3, but we'll just clock it higher!
Sure it will generate more heat but we don't care! We can still say to the public that we got the highest clocked processor compared to that other CPU selling dude because we know just how stupid people are! 😁

Then Intel made Northwood
Intel: Yeah, we past 3GHz with this motherfucker and that other chipfactory can't even get past 2.2GHz with their Athlon XP! We beat them yeah! But now we got to really crush them for good so we can finally rake in the cash like we did when we were selling our DX4's! 😁
Lets design a chip that's even more stupid then Northwood by again lengthening the pipelines, shrinking the die and clock it to 10GHz! *Champaign corks pops in Intel HQ*

Then they made Prescott
Intel: Ah crap! This thing sucks even more then the Northwood! Dammit, what do we do now!
Wait!
We know!
We'll just give it even more cache to compensate for this new processors stupidness!!!
Sure it will run even hotter then a jet engine but nobody will care! 😁
Crap, it still doesn't perform as well as Northwood!
Well, lets just give it SSE3 so we can sell these bitches faster! 😁
Uh oh, we can barely clock this thing higher then Northwood. Oh well, at least we sold tons of these things so what could possibly go wrong??? 😁

Then AMD made Athlon64
Intel: Holy sweet mother of all macaroni's!
We know what to do! We'll just give this shitty processor even more cache and call it the Extreme Edition! 😁
Why are they calling our P4EE the emergency edition?
Dammit they're finally on to us!
Well lets just fire half our staff and create a rework of the Pentium 3, give it a great name and star it on television with all the money we took from our customer's pockets!
haha, we win! 😁

Very nice machine, badmojo! Can't believe someone was going to throw away that case.

I agree, the Pentium 4 wasn't really as bad as the AMD fanboys of the era made it out to be. I'm actually building a P4 2.8 Northwood rig at the moment... fairly excited to see what it's capable of.

I like that Zalman CPU cooler. I've always thought it would be fun to buy a 125W CPU like a Pentium D 965 or Athlon 64 X2 6400+ just for an excuse to get a beastly CPU cooler.

The 8800 GTX is nice as well. I remember the graphics cards from those years were very alluring... my personal crush is the X1950 XTX (slow and overpriced for its time, but that stock cooler tho... damn). Luckily, the late DX9 / early DX10 stuff is right in the worthless valley right now - old enough to be obsolete, not old enough to be collectible 😁

tincup wrote:

One of the delights of retro gaming and PC building is that it's not the tradeoff between price and performance that it always is on the leading edge. You're free to slide up and down the performance scale, platforms and hardware, at whim, dialing in whatever capabilities you care to, free of dollar concerns [except for the exceptional parts], and delve into any nook that beckons. Purism and ruthless analysis is not necessarily a virtue, and perhaps even a drawback when putting these rigs together. Years later we are able to draw on a tool kit far vaster than anything we originally had at our disposal and the toughest choices are usually compatibility issues and matching system specs with targeted games.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I think the smart enthusiasts have always known not to buy the latest and greatest - too expensive, and too many unresolved bugs. Last generation stuff is generally more affordable, and more supported to boot. In a way, buying retro stuff is just an extension of that philosophy.