Nice rig 😉

I looked up your board (I think I have a similar one, the one with the green socket) and noticed it uses the KT400 chipset. Think you will replace the active northbridge HSF with a passive one in the near future? 😉

Didn't these Chieftech cases look just like that one?

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Didn't these Chieftech cases look just like that one?

Which cases?

Tetrium wrote:

Nice rig 😉

I looked up your board (I think I have a similar one, the one with the green socket) and noticed it uses the KT400 chipset. Think you will replace the active northbridge HSF with a passive one in the near future? 😉

Nah. I want the thing as cool as possible. The original heatsink/fan on there was ok, but it just used a sticky/uneven thermal pad, and the fan really wasn't that fast either. I know the KT400 didn't get too hot to begin with, but the cooler the better in my book. I had to flash the board to get it to recognize the Sempron correctly. They didn't add complete Sempron support until the last bios update, so until I did, it thought it was a 1ghz Athlon XP or something.

ProfessorProfessorson wrote:

Which cases?

Chieftec. That's what they are called and they were quite popular back in the day.

I was assuming it was a Antec, since the case fans and psu were Antect, but it could be a Chieftec, sure. I remember Chieftec used similar designs for most of their cases back then, but I dont remember much on what they looked like anymore.

Chieftec Dragon apparently:

But there were heaps of versions. With window, different top, various sized and so on...

At one time I owned an MSI board with the KT400A. It was quite flaky too but I always just blamed the chipset. I didn't realize baking a board could possibly make it better though I don't believe I'd ever want to try.

I love the idea of a somewhat modern-ish system in all beige with a premium quality CRT to match.

Yeah, looking up on google images, I see its def a Chieftec, as most of their cases from 2002 and 2003 looked like mine, with some variations.

GXL750 wrote:

At one time I owned an MSI board with the KT400A. It was quite flaky too but I always just blamed the chipset. I didn't realize baking a board could possibly make it better though I don't believe I'd ever want to try.

I think mine was being snotty was because it had cold/cracked solder spots that needed to be re-flowed. I don't recommend you bake anything computer wise unless you have electronics repair skill, as sometimes some components may fall off during the bake, and you may need to solder them back on by hand.

EDIT:

Now I really am wondering about the case. Looking at the Antec SX835, that case has the top half of the case being removable like mine, over all similar design on the plastic, and exact look on the metal and the inside.
Heres a pic of the Antec SX835:

Oh well, either way, great case as is. Runs cool enough so far that I could probably get away with a AM2/AM3 system inside it if I felt like it.

Nice little build. That case is very similar to the Antec SX1030B I used to have my AXP 1900+ in back in 02-03.

Though I wouldn't call the Sempron 2400+ faster than the AXP 2100+ - the AXP actually has the faster clock speed. (1733 vs 1667). Sempron's on a faster bus, same 256k cache, etc - they're probably about the same.

I would also imagine that's a hurtin unit running all that (and a 5950) on a 300w PSU.

Oh mAn.....nice.... Good story, Great hardware and legendary case. Ive been looking everywhere for either a chieftec dragon or this antec for so long. No luck so far.... But when i do strike it, its socket A tm fo shure

I guess that Antec purchased the to the design, or licensed it, or something like that.

maddmaxstar wrote:

Nice little build. That case is very similar to the Antec SX1030B I used to have my AXP 1900+ in back in 02-03.

Though I wouldn't call the Sempron 2400+ faster than the AXP 2100+ - the AXP actually has the faster clock speed. (1733 vs 1667). Sempron's on a faster bus, same 256k cache, etc - they're probably about the same.

I would also imagine that's a hurtin unit running all that (and a 5950) on a 300w PSU.

From what testing I have done with the cpus I have on hand, the Sempron 2400+ seemed to trounce the older XP 1900+ and 2100+. It was pretty much on par with my XP 2400+ 266FSB cpu, so all I can gather from that is that the extra 66 in FSB speed makes a real difference. The temps on the Semprons are nice and low too. My son has a legacy XP build for his bedroom that I did for him that uses one of my Sempron 2500+ cpus. Its a nice performer too.

sgt76 wrote:

Oh mAn.....nice.... Good story, Great hardware and legendary case. Ive been looking everywhere for either a chieftec dragon or this antec for so long. No luck so far.... But when i do strike it, its socket A tm fo shure

Yeah if you can score one of these cases, I say def go for it. Just be aware, the thing is heavy as hell once its loaded with hardware. Even without, its weight is pretty up there. I'm thinking loaded with hardware, it must surpass 40lbs easily.

The Sempron is an interesting chip. I purchased one to run as a network firewall (using Smoothwall Linux, and later pfSense). That was about 6 years ago, and cost me $75 AUD. I think at the time, even the cheapest socket 775 Celeron was over $100, also the motherboards were a lot cheaper, so the Sempron was a good choice for tasks that didn't need too much grunt.

I replaced that box only a few weeks ago, it was using too much electricity. It got replaced by an Apple Airport Extreme, which is silent, much faster, and far less power hungry than the Sempron box.

When I was on socket 754 the Sempron chips offered amazing value. I had a 2400+, which I believe was clocked at 1.6 GHz. The Asrock board with Nvidia chipset was a good overclocker and with max. CPU Voltage (I slapped a large Arctic Cooling onto it) I had this machine running at 2.4 GHz together with a 7800GT.

That was when overclocking was worth it. Performance of a 4000+ Venice for a fraction of the cost.

When I get time, I will post some pics of benchtest scores comparing the Sempron 2400+ against the XP 2400+. I have half of the results done now, just need to finish up.

Test results to compare the Sempron 2400+ on a typical VIA 333 FSB able motherboard versus a Athlon XP 2400+ on a typical VIA 266 FSB able motherboard. Same Geforce 5950 Ultra was used, and the exact same driver sets for both gpu and chipset were implemented. No overclocking of any kind implemented.

Athlon XP 2400+ on a Asrock KT266 based board:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sempron 2400+ on a Gigabyte KT400 based board:

As you can see, sticking to native setups designed around each processors fsb speed, the Sempron pulls ahead just a tad bit. I have a feeling if the same board was used, KT400, or Nforce 2, the scores would be even closer, but as is, they are pretty close. Either way, its quite clear that nothing below a XP2400+ would stand toe to toe with the Sempron 2400+ without overclocking, since the XP 2400+ was already a mild, but solid, leap ahead of the XP 2200+.

Excellent data! Awesome...

Makes me want to build a Socket A machines as well 😀

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Excellent data! Awesome...

Makes me want to build a Socket A machines as well 😀

You don't have a Socket A rig? 😳

Personally I love my Socket A rigs (with the top one being an Athlon XP 3200+ on a KT600 motherboard, 2GiB DDR-400, GF7600GS and (don't laugh 😜) a slow but very silent 100GB ATA laptop drive 😀

Only thing I don't like about the VIA SATA boards is that it won't work with SATA 2 drives (the SATA 300 ones) due to a bug in VIA's SATA implementation.
I'm not sure about dedicated SATA controllers though, those might work with SATA 2 drives (even though those controllers were usually SATA 1 and linked to the PCI bus, limiting them to 133MB/s).

Another disadvantage Socket A often has is it's inability to run 4 banks (or 2 on older chipsets) at the northbridge's maximum bus frequency, which means it has an advantage to get 512MB SS DIMM's (usually 1 bank) instead of 512MB DS DIMM's (usually 2 banks).

I could go on 🤣 but I'm short on time atm!

Tetrium wrote:

You don't have a Socket A rig? :shocked: […]
Show full quote

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Excellent data! Awesome...

Makes me want to build a Socket A machines as well 😀

You don't have a Socket A rig? 😳

Personally I love my Socket A rigs (with the top one being an Athlon XP 3200+ on a KT600 motherboard, 2GiB DDR-400, GF7600GS and (don't laugh 😜) a slow but very silent 100GB ATA laptop drive 😀

Only thing I don't like about the VIA SATA boards is that it won't work with SATA 2 drives (the SATA 300 ones) due to a bug in VIA's SATA implementation.
I'm not sure about dedicated SATA controllers though, those might work with SATA 2 drives (even though those controllers were usually SATA 1 and linked to the PCI bus, limiting them to 133MB/s).

Another disadvantage Socket A often has is it's inability to run 4 banks (or 2 on older chipsets) at the northbridge's maximum bus frequency, which means it has an advantage to get 512MB SS DIMM's (usually 1 bank) instead of 512MB DS DIMM's (usually 2 banks).

I could go on 🤣 but I'm short on time atm!

I wish someone had made a slocket adapter to fit socket A Athlons in Slot A systems.