AMD Athlon 64 3500+ deskside tower


 
Click here for more pictures. This deskside tower has been painted to look better, look how ugly it was before.

General Technical Information

HOSTNAME YYZ
SYSTEM CPU AMD Athlon 64 3500+ @2200MHz S939
CACHE (2nd, 1st D/I) 512 KB, 64 KB / 64 KB
RAM  1 GB dual channel DDR400 (Max. 4 GB)
IDE BUS 2 x ATA-133 (Max. 133.3 MB/s) and 4 x Serial ATA (Max. 150 MB/s) RAID1, RAID0
SCSI BUS
 Adaptec 19160 U160 PCI SCSI host adapter
INTERFACES
 		2 x FireWire ports, 10 x USB2 ports, 1 x IrDA, 1 x serial port and 1 x parallell port
OPTION BUS PCI-E x16 slot, PCI-E x1 slot, 4 x PCI slots
GRAPHICS ASUS Radeon X550 256MB PCI-E
DISPLAY
 		19" HP 1955 TFT display*
HARD DISK DRIVES 120 GB Maxtor 7200 RPM ATA-133 8MB cache, 2 x 18 GB 15K RPM U160 Compaq SCSI disks
DVD DRIVE 16x NEC Dual Layer DVD+-R/RW DVD Writer
FLOPPY DRIVE
 		1.44MB Floppy drive
NETWORK 10/100/1000baseT onboard ethernet
AUDIO SoundBlaster Live! Platinum PCI card and onboard AC97 chip, Behringer FCA202 firewire audio interface
OS Windows XP, Windows XP x64
YEAR 2006
SPEED about 6380 VAX MIPS
POWER CONSUMPTION (MAX. / MEASURED) 385 / 118 W
COMMENTS This computer is my fastest one to work with at home.
PRICE '06
 		$1400
*= this monitor is shared with my Mac Mini and my Linux server, it's connected to a 2-port USB KVM switch (the Mini has it's own keyboard and is connected to the TFT monitor's DVI connector).

Windows System Information


History and other comments

Update July 2006: I changed the mainboard & CPUs in this sytem. The old mainboard & CPU went to my Linux server. Some older history of the box follows below:

I've built this system from scratch. It inherated some parts from my old deskside PC but the most important internal components were replaced. The motherboard is MSI-6702E and it is equipped with Socket 939 which supports CPU upgrades up to 4000+ and FX versions of AMD Athlon 64 (according to the manual, newer CPUs may be supported too). By selecting the lowest-in-the-range AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (CPU core running at 1800MHz) this combination of mainboard and CPU provided the best price-performance ratio at that time of purchase, and was the most upgradable alternative at the same time. 

I chose a slightly oversized PSU (385W) to get a quiet and stable peecee. Big PSU = stable voltages = stable peecee. I purchased the CPU fan separately to get a fan with as low noise as possible. It was a success, my new peecee now has roughly three to four times the performance of my old peecee, while noise level is only a fraction of what is used to be before.

Keeping in mind that I was using a Dual P3 1 GHz peecee with high-end SCSI disks before getting this, I must say that since 2005 it's possible to get a very good number cruncher / an impressive desktop peecee for little money. While leaving a "genuine Intel" platform for AMD I can tell you that I'm impressed by the good quality of the AMD Athlon 64, especially comparing with the older and not so good AMD Athlon 32-bit, AMD K6 & K5. The power saving mechanisms that are lowering the normal working temperature of the CPU to as low as +35°C are welcome, just as welcome as the 64-bit adressing capabilities (just like it's "big brothers"; DEC Alpha, MIPS, HP PA-RISC etc. etc. ).

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Last updated:  13-12-2006