With an avatar like mine, I guess there's no reason to ever respond to a P4 thread, right?

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2022-04-29, 17:24:

With an avatar like mine, I guess there's no reason to ever respond to a P4 thread, right?

🤣. I'm not a big fan of the P4 either, but these days they do make a lot of sense for a cheap no nonsense 98 build.
Not everyone has access to the more period correct hardware without paying up for it.

They do make great 98 machines.
I mean back in the day i was all about AthlonXP, especially for the price... but I've come to appreciate P4. Its probably a combination of factors like aging Athlon motherboards, and new power supplies that aren't the best with AthlonXPs requirements, but I do appreciate that P4 is now cheap and can use a modern PSU on it.... genrally a very stable platform too.
I'm warming to P4, but I don't really want to 🤣

P4s are wicked. You can get them for pennies now too, I have about 4 or 5 of them in a closet through accidental purchases.
I'm with you on the Sound Blaster Live being a nuisance, in my experience unless you track down the exact driver version that shipped on its included CD then it's constant issues.

The good thing about Pentium 4 is that those are abundant. You throw a rock and it hits a P4 office PC. And the rock is also a P4 office PC. The 2.2-2.6GHz versions aren't all that hot, yet still have plenty of power for W98 stuff. Perfect for budget builds. For SB Live! I only use SB0060; SB0100 and SB0220 and never had more issues than normal for old PCs. Though my SB0100 came with its own driver CD.

I mostly ignored netburst so far.

Apart from being focused on 1990s stuff, I never quite got past the image of those to be energy hogs.
I know that's pretty irrelevant for retro gear, but still...

Only netburst machine I have is a hp/compaq dc7600 SFF. Actually a Pentium D 3 GHz, that's a dual core cedar mill.

Few years past, those were sold right off the ramp of some office building by the dozen, apparently by the admin in charge of disposing of them.
I actually wondered if those could be turned into basic budget web & word machines. All the hallmarks of a "still somewhat contemporary" PC back then: 4 GB RAM, SATA, PCIe.
And, on paper, by chipset and socket 775, they'd take core2duo CPUs. But AFAIK, HP made sure they won't...

So, with netburst CPU, no dice.

Still glad I have the token one big OEM machine - proprietary AF, true marvel of serviceability and efficient use of space and cooling.

Should I try using it? It's low profile and probably will give me all kinds of grief...

You're a big boy now, how much shit can a proprietary box give you?

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-05-01, 22:21:

You're a big boy now, how much shit can a proprietary box give you?

Hehe, thx, but just random thoughts, the Win98 case, which to me, usually includes basic DOS capabilities:

- There are only two low profile PCI sound cards I know of with some DOS compatibility, that CT SB0410 live-but-not-really-a-live and the Hercules Muse Lt based on the CMI8738. Both don't smell of a great solution to me.
- The onboard IGP of the intel 945G chipset most likely manages to combine maximum incompatibility with minimum 3D performance.
- Gf FX5+ LP graphic cards for PCIe probably will accomplish the same with their drivers

Pure WinXP as wanted by the gods and the case sticker up front - and the license sticker out back, actually:
- Same silly question about LP graphics
- Could get the LP X-Fi xtreme gamer if that's any good, I guess.
- What would be the fun in that, apart from a really compact case of a truly evil corporation?

Plus, I'm really not to keen on recapping and those capacitors by now are all over the place...

So, I'll probably stick to PIII and Athlons as the most recent machines, for the time being, sorry. 😉

I like the compact tower and P4 is the ideal CPU for a Win98 build these days They're affordable, available, stable, and can run everything. Cool build!

Jasin Natael wrote on 2022-04-29, 17:38:

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2022-04-29, 17:24:

With an avatar like mine, I guess there's no reason to ever respond to a P4 thread, right?

🤣. I'm not a big fan of the P4 either, but these days they do make a lot of sense for a cheap no nonsense 98 build.
Not everyone has access to the more period correct hardware without paying up for it.

It's really a "redundant" build to be honest, I just wanted to do it just to scratch an itch. So far it runs win98 games
from 97-2004 pretty well. I'll probably end up selling it in the long run, retro pc's are an interest locally.

Misery! Booted the system up the other day and the screen went "wonky", plus the cpu fan was roaring loud. Turned out the cpu retention bracket
busted at the clip connections. Was using the star tech cooler, maybe should have bent the clips somewhat to ease the stress? First order of
business is order a new bracket then decide on a another cooler . Have an intel one but it's fairly loud too, but looking on amazon there's not
a lot to choose from regarding the 478 socket. Stay tuned.....

buckeye wrote on 2022-05-16, 21:12:

Misery! Booted the system up the other day and the screen went "wonky", plus the cpu fan was roaring loud. Turned out the cpu re […]
Show full quote

Misery! Booted the system up the other day and the screen went "wonky", plus the cpu fan was roaring loud. Turned out the cpu retention bracket
busted at the clip connections. Was using the star tech cooler, maybe should have bent the clips somewhat to ease the stress? First order of
business is order a new bracket then decide on a another cooler . Have an intel one but it's fairly loud too, but looking on amazon there's not
a lot to choose from regarding the 478 socket. Stay tuned.....

I had forgotten all about those 478 coolers with the stupid 2 bars. Man I hated those things when they were new, and I'm sure I would hate them now as well.
Ditto, for the stupid push pin ones that replaced them.

Any fans with 10 to 15mm thick is noisy no matter what. There is lot of different better P4 heatsinks out there including intel. No just one type of intel heatsink you have.

Cheers,

I wanted a quieter S478 cooler so i got Thermaltake Pipe101 and slapped a 92mm noctua fan on it. close to 500gm of pure copper with a quiet fan = good times.

foil_fresh wrote on 2022-05-18, 03:43:

I wanted a quieter S478 cooler so i got Thermaltake Pipe101 and slapped a 92mm noctua fan on it. close to 500gm of pure copper with a quiet fan = good times.

Can you show some pics of this? How did you install it on the socket 478 retention bracket? That thing is a "chunk" of metal!

i can get a pic later tonight, but if i can explain poorly: they are 2 individual lever clips that act the exact same way as a stock cooler, each one has a thumb grip fold-over sections that clamp down (one goes left the other goes right) and use the 4 squared holes in the retention bracket. once the heatsink is mounted you can then screw in a fan on top. iirc you must do the fan after the cooler.

And yeah, its a big chunky cooler. I needed something really hefty as I had to cool a Prescott 3.2ghz (and the stock fan sounded like an airport).

Follow up to last post: New bracket came in and reinstallation of the Star Tech cooler went fine. All seemed well at first but now temps are
up to the 50's and that's just running a 2D game. I'm thinking the puny fan on the Star Tech is the culprit so will be shopping around for
a beefier cooler. Sadly P4 coolers are not in abundance so this will take time.

I was planning to "flip" this build but until the cooling issue is fixed really can't sell it in good conscience.

Managed to snag an Antec p4 vertical cooler and in the nick of time as the Star Tech broke yet another cpu retention bracket.
The Antec install went fine and in addition a 120mm fan was added to the side panel. The front fan was removed since
really there was no benefit as the case isn't setup for ventilation there. Temps idled around 36c and peaked at 48c playing
Quake 3 demo. Later on I'll post some pics but be warned on getting that Star Tech cooler....

Here's a pic of the cooler installed. So far it's working out quite well and I'm glad was able to find
an alternative to the Star Tech.