Phenom II X2 550 BE

[ElPolloDiabl]

This might be an interesting project. Use a quad core machine to emulate 4 parts of the the Amiga. One for cpu and the rest for custom chips. I think this has been thought of before for multi-cpu system.

You will have to wait for the UAE guy to get around to it. Or design something yourself.
What we need is new approach to programming for 4 or more cores. Burn all the old programming books and rewrite them with multicore CPUs in mind.

[trekiej]

I believe I asked about that a while back. I think he said it was not possible.
It would be cool to make a c program of each chip and then use get them to talk to each other, maybe use Arex.
I heard of making applications with scripting languages that tie or bind c programs together.

[jj]

I agree 1000% the only part of a pc that you realy do need to spend decent money in on the PSU.  I have learnt this after buying cheaper PSU's that are rated 600w, but will not push out much amps.   £60 to £70 you need to spend.
 
As regards to emualtion.  I thought multi-core did not make sense for emualtion if you wanted exact timing ?

[trekiej]

As Yoda might say, a good power supply you need. Skimp not.

[koshman]

Agreed. Although I don't think it's necessary to spend that much - here you can buy OEM Seasonic Energy Knight units for less than half of that - <30GBP for 400W. That's with active PFC, 80+ certification etc. Also Fortrons (Green Power) are said to be good and those can be had for even less. I would expect the prices in the rest of Europe/USA to be even lower.

[trekiej]

I plan to buy the chip first, but hope it does no damage by any overloading.

[jj]

To be fair not bought a PSU in a few years so the decent ones have probably come down in price.  I jsut remeber it was worth getting one with at least two seperate 12v rails

[ElPolloDiabl]

I ordered a Radeon 5750. It looks like a lot of bang for your buck, I'll let you know how it performs on tuesday.

[Karlos]

I ordered a Radeon 5750. It looks like a lot of bang for your buck, I'll let you know how it performs on tuesday.

I recently built a friend a system with a 1GB 5770. It's about on a par performance wise with my old nVidia GTX260 (currently using a GTX275, long and sordid story), but of course does DX11 tessellation and is thus a bit more future compatible. Not at all a bad card and quite reasonably priced.

[trekiej]

unfortunately my board goes to 89 watts. I guess I will stick with the Athlon II X4.

[trekiej]

I bought a Phenom II X2 555 and was able to unlock the extra cores with an MSI 890GXM-G65. You need a Bios version of 1.2 or greater. I have the 1.6 version of the bios.

[Piru]

I've built one system for a customer with a Phenom II X2 550 BE.  I wasn't particularly happy with the fact that the processor ran significantly hotter (~40C idle) than a Phenom II X4 945, a Phenom II X3 710 or any Athlon II X2 I've used (the rest about 30C idle).  In hindsight it seems almost unbelievable that the CPU fan span faster on that processor than any of the others I've used in system builds, yet the CPU temp was higher, but I definitely remember thinking "that's the last time I use that processor".

PASSIVE COOLING
Who needs friggin' fans!?

[trekiej]

Wow, I had a fan a while back for a amd 2800+, it was pretty big, but not that big.
I have not really looked at my temps lately. 4 cores for 88 dollars is good to me.
I have a Cooler Master Elite 342 case. I am not crazy about the heat sink size and want to upgrade to something that can handle overclocking. I wish it was cooler running and I wish I could get a 900e series Phenom instead, but my paycheck is not much these days.

[trekiej]

@Piru
Is that heat sink really necessary or did the owner want some peace and quiet?

1000 posts

[koshman]

And, maybe more importantly, does he use the board placed horizontally in a desktop case? Such a heatsink surely must break off as soon as you pick up the mobo and place it vertically....

EDIT: Congrats on your 1000th post, trekiej

[Piru]

@Piru
Is that heat sink really necessary or did the owner want some peace and quiet?

The CPU is Intel® CoreTM2 Q9550 @ 3.4GHz. The gfxcard is passive GeForce 9500GT. The only fans in the system are in the Nexus Clodius case. I can easily run the case fans at the lowest setting (1000rpm) and the CPU cores stay at around 42 degrees max at full 4 core load. There no HDD, but SSD SATA2 drive.

I have similar setup for the router/fileserver, except that it has Intel® CoreTM2 E6350 @ 2.8GHz and the cheapest PCI-E gfxcard I could find. In addition SSD SATA2 system drive the router/fileserver has 3TB RAID-5 setup.

I like my systems quiet.