Secret of Intel Core Duo CPU

I have 2 systems running with Q6600 Intel Core Duo Quad cores. They can crunch a lot of numbers and last price I saw for them online for only $290-310 each. Both these systems use a Asus P5B-VM uATX motherboard, 2GB of DDR2-800 RAM, Enermax Liberty 400w modular power supply, 80GB SATA drive and Ubuntu Linux 7.04.

The Sneaky Secret of the Core Duo
I have since discovered the secret of the Core Duo - it is a rather smart (but sneaky) marketing move by Intel. My first Core Duo was a E6300 running at 1.8Ghz. I remember reading all the magazine reviews that showed the 1.8 kicking the butt of AMD's running at 2+Ghz. It was like Intel had found a new secret sauce for making processors. The magazines played along and all bemoaned how AMD was doomed unless they could counter this brilliant new secret sauce.

But I now know the secret. At work I happen to have a few Pentium D Dual-Core running at 3.6GHz - a nice number; just happens to be twice the rated speed of the E6300. However, if you run some old-fashioned MIPS/FLOPS hardware benchmarks - the kind magazines NEVER run anymore - you will find the Core Duo at 1.8Ghz pretty much matches the Dual-Core PD at 3.6Ghz at basic integer tests, and does only 50-60% as well at the floating point tests. So clearly, the Core Duo E6300 has portions of the chip running at 1.8GHz and portions running at 3.6Ghz (double-clocked). Such technology is easy these days - 10/100Mhz Ethernet hardware runs with a 25Mhz crystal and uses a clock multiplier to gain the 100Mhz cycles. Intel must be using a 1.8Ghz crystal and clock multiplier to run portions of the chip at 3.6Ghz. This also makes sense given the Core Duo concept came out of Intel's "mobile" design team - people who realized that running different portions of the chip at different speeds helps cut power usage and heat generation.

The really brilliant (& somewhat risky) marketing move was to call a chip like the E6300 a "1.8GHz chip" even though it ran at 3.6Ghz ... this is what caused the big media back-lash against AMD. Had the magazines tested the E6300 as a 3.6Ghz chip ... the test results would have been disappointing compared to a true 3.6Ghz Pentium D dual-core. It would have shown the Core Duo as a chip which sacrificed performance for lower power.

However, since it was called a 1.8Ghz chip, all the tests were showing up as 30 to 70% "better than expected". Magzines had no problems with the apples-to-oranges comparison of a 1.8Ghz Intel out running a 2+Ghz AMD since the AMD had (on paper) a higher clock rate. But what they didn't understand was that they were actually comparing a slightly crippled 3.6Ghz Intel against the 2+Ghz AMD; of course the crippled 3.6Ghz chip would beat out the 2+Ghz AMD

Faster RAM helped Vista rating

In a previous posting, I mentioned how my daughter's new PC came with DDR2-533 SDRAM. Well, http://newegg.com had a sale on DDR2-800 SDRAM; Patriot 2GB (2x1GB 1.8v) was selling for $94 a set, so I bought 2 sets.

It turns out the new HP test systems my employer buys have DDR2-533 RAM, so I donated the old 1GB from home to one of my test systems to bump it up from 1GB to 2GB. I put the second 2GB DDR2-800 into another of my AMD X2 systems which had only DDR2-667 before, moving the DDR2-667 also to work.

The Acer PC now has a Vista Windows Experience Rating of 5.0 limited by CPU. Before it was 4.5 limited by memory - for some reason the CPU's rating bumped up to 5.0 from 4.9 with the RAM update. So my estimated cost of $740 went up to $850 after the RAM and shipping.

As another side note, I ran a boinc client on this Acer for a few weeks and with its dual CPU running at 100% load 24 hours a day, the CPU temperature hovered around 125 degree F. All of my other dual-core systems can run at 100% load being only 100-105 degree F, but they all have better copper coolers. So I'm assuming the noisy, 70mm stock CPU cooler in the Acer 380 isn't the best. However, if you don't plan to run the dual cores flat out (and my familt will NEVER do so - I'm the odd-ball doing things like that), then Acer's stock CPU cooler is fine. If you plan to do a lot of Video encoding or game playing, you may want to consider a new cooler with at least a larger fan to get better air flow with less noise.

New PC for Daughter

Well, I was planning to upgrade the internals of my Daughter's 5-year old Dell 500SC (with 1.2GHz Celeron) ... but she beat me to the punch and literally let the "magic smoke" out. The room smelled for a bit and the system was completely dead - the power supply died. So desiring a solution to last the family for another 4 to 5 years, and given the cost of buying Windows Vista as an "upgrade" I decided to just find a good, low-cost stock system which came prelicensed. Plus my wife likes to touch-n-feel things before buying.

Acer Aspire E380
We found a nice "open-box" Acer Aspire E380 for $590 plus we received a free $50 free gift card. It has a nice "stainless-steel" looking case with black trim - very sharp & wife-approved. Although just manufactured in Jan 2007, I guess this particular model is being axed so BestBuy was selling off the floor model. I've had several Acer notebooks in the past and consider Acer quality acceptable - but their web site and documentation has gone very badly downhill. Off the shelf, the E380's specs were:

• AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ (2.20GHz)
• Acer EM61SM/EM61PM Motherboard, based on NVidia 6100V chipset
  
• Hitachi 320GB SATA 7400RPM Hard Drive
• 2x512KB DDR2 PC2-4300 (533) RAM
• Windows Home Premium (Experience Rating 2.9 limited by graphics)

Home Tweaks:
My first step was to add a PCI-Express-based NVidia 7600GT graphics card with 12 hardware pixel shaders and 256MB DDR3 RAM (worth about $99 online). This boosted the Windows rating from 2.9 up to 4.5, with the rating now being limited by the rather pathetic system RAM. The 7600 is rated at 5.9; the X2 processor is rated 4.9 and even the stock SATA hard drive is rated a 5.6. Not bad for a computer costing less than $600.

But NVidia suggests a minimum 350-watt power supply with 18A of 12vdc power for the 7600GT, while the E380 came with only a 300-watt supply split between 10Amp and 13Amp 12vdc rails. Given the old PC died from power supply failure and the E380's stock power supply was blowing some pretty hot air out the back as-is, I upgraded to an EnerMax 400-watt ELT400AWT ($75 online). This is the 5th system I've used this supply in and I have been pleased with the results. The ELT400AWT has modular cables for the drive power, a large 120mm fan, and after installation is blowing nice, cool air out of the Acer E380. It is rated for a total 12vdc of 30A being split with up to 20A on either of two 12vdc rails. That should satisfy both the NVidia 7600 and the DVR card I may add later. Since my daughter doesn't play PC games I don't foresee ever needing to add higher graphics power to this PC. Actually, I was a bit surprised at the temperature difference between the stock and EnerMax supply - since both were running the same load I can only assume the stock supply had a super low efficiency.

I added a quiet 120mm door fan with external filter. I like the Antec Tri-Cool fans, as they include a small switch to select 1 of 3 speeds (and therefore 1 of 3 sound levels). As much as I hate the fan cable linking the door to the case, blowing air directly onto the top of the PCI cards and the various chip sets has such a noticeable impact on lowering temperatures that I feel obligated to do this. Luckily the Acer has a perforated door grill which allowed the fan to be attached via 1.25-inch machine screws without cutting a 120mm hole in the metal door.

The only tweak remaining is the slow RAM. While the Acer EM61SM Mother board has no real manual (even online), from everything I can find it should support DDR2-800. But I'm in no hurry ... as soon as I find a use for the old DDR2-533 RAM I'll buy 1 or 2GB of DDR2-800 to swap into this system. Until then it runs pretty well.

Issues to watch for in buying "off-the-shelf" systems
With margins being squeezed, builders like Dell, HP or Acer tend to skimp on the specs that normal people don't look at. The difference between a $600 and $1200 system is rarely enough to justify spending the extra $600. In my case, I prefer to buy the $600 system and spend another $200-300 to make a system better than the $1200 one would have been.

Things I have found "lacking" in stock systems:

1. Slow hard drives - I've had a few stock systems come with 5400RPM instead of 7400RPM. When was the last time you saw a Dell or HP add mention the RPM of the drive? They don't - just the drive size. Even launching the "Device Manager" won't show you the drive speed; you need to find the model number and search the web (I did this for the E380 and was happy to see the drive was SATA and 7400RPM.) Would swapping drives void your stock warranty? I'm not sure, but I would guess not.
   
2. Slow system RAM - to be honest, this Acer E380 is the first system I seen that came with such under-powered RAM. But again I guess it is to be expected since all the big-box shops just list the RAM size and maybe the DIMM's used. Launching the "Device Manager" also won't show you the drive speed; I guess the only thing you could do in the store is reboot to the system BIOS and see what it says - but I wager it just says "auto" for speed. Would swapping memory sticks void your stock warranty? I'm not sure, but I would guess not.
3. On-Board graphics - of course this is a rather common and easily detectable issue. These days one should assume the built-in graphics are useful only for normal office applications and watching videos. In truth, this is best since the extra graphics power needed for gaming literally puts a "power tax" on all usage - adding to people's electric bills whether they need that GPU power or not. Would adding a plug-in graphics card void your stock warranty? No - I assume ... unless it overloads the stock power supply.
4. Power supplies - while I always assumed the "stock" supplies would be less-than ideal, until I discovered the extreme "hot-exhaust-air" difference between the Acer E380's stock power supply and the rather modest-cost ($75) after-market power supply I did not think the gap was so great. But clearly the stock supply was creating a good deal more heat, which ultimately means it is running at LESS efficiency. To bad my AV power meter is back in Minnesota so I couldn't compare the actual watts-consumption difference. Would swapping in a good power supply void your stock warranty? I'm sure it WILL, which creates a sad irony ... if your good graphic card fries the stock power supply (and you remove the card BEFORE getting the system serviced) then the maker would need to fix the "bad" power supply. Yet if you put in a good supply which won't burn or cause such warranty repairs, you void the warranty.
5. Microsoft License - a little known issue is that buying a "stock PC" purchased with an OEM Windows license does NOT give you the right to change motherboards or "upgrade" the computer. This is something I learned the hard way - with calls to Microsoft to overcome authentication issues with Windows XP on another old OEM system. In effect, the low-cost "royalty license" included with your stock system is tied to that motherboard - a new motherboard requires a new license ... although with my phone call and excuse that the old motherboard had burned out, the fine folks in the South Asian call center gave me codes to reauthenticate the old XP license on the new motherboard, but I should not assume that will happen a second time!
   

End Result: so by spending $540 (PC minus gift card value) + 75 (power supply) + 100 (NVidia 7600GT) + 15 (door fan) for a total of $730 I obtained a working family computer with Microsoft Vista Home Premium and an experience rating of 4.5. If and when I update to DDR2-800 RAM the experience rating will be 5+. Given the license limitations of the OEM Vista license I was careful to buy a motherboard which should still be effective 4 years from now. With 2 PCI-express slots, 2 PCI slots, 4 DDR2 slots, 8 onboard USB ports and an AMD AM2 socket, the E380's motherboard will surely be obsolete even 2 years from now, but it should still be serviceable and effective for many years.

I doubt even spending $1100 for a "fancier" stock system from Acer or HP or Dell would have given a better result. I can still put together faster Ubuntu Linux systems from scratch for $350-450, but they don't require Windows license fees nor fancy GPU power.

A64 Temperatures

Interesting differences:

The PcChips mobo which properly manages the Athlon64 temperature has a Zalman-clone "cyclone" style copper cooler. It runs at about 2200 RPM and is fairly quiet. The Athlon64 idles at between 75 and 79 degrees F. When pressed to high load it will be running in the 85-87 degree F range. In rare situations I've seen it hit the low 90's. Not bad for a modern CPU. The Speedfan utility can query both the mobo's view of CPU temperature, as well as the AMD K8 CPU offers direct PCI access into the CPU's view of it's own temperature. The direct K8 value tends to be within 2 degrees F higher or lower than the mobo. This gives me fairly good confidence in both values.

In contrast the Asus mobo with the same Athlon64 CPU always saw the temperature at 70 to 73 degree C - and was always running the CPU fan of the CoolMaster copper cooler at minimum RPM of 1400. Direct SpeedFan access to the K8 via PCI put the temperature in the 100 to 110 degree F range. This is a worrying difference - but given my room temperature was in the 72 to 74 degree F range it's rather hard to believe the CPU was really running COLDER than room temperature. So the Asus has to go - I RMAed it back to newegg.

I ordered as replacement an interesting Jetway mobo with an Nvidia chip-set and a mix of PCI, AGP anf PCI-Express slots. If it works with my NVidia 6800 AGP card, this mobo (with 2 PCI-Express slots) will make a good server that can still be in use 3 or 4 years from now.

Asus K8V-MX MoBo with A64 CPU

Summary: happy with my last upgrade, I bought an Asus K8V-MX mini-ATX motherboard for use with a second low-watt A64 3000+ CPU for use as my file server, DVR, and media server. I was sorely disaapointed in the Asus - I'd assumed by preputation the Asus would be easy to use; I was wrong. I may still buy Asus in the future, but for now this motherboard has proven unusable.

My second upgrade was from an old, overloaded Intel Celeron to a socket 754 Athlon 64 3000+. The Celeron had had trouble - even with hardware-assist from graphics and PVR cards - playing encrypted DVD smoothly if there was any network activity. Especially since this was also a file server, remote access during playback would cause hiccups while playing video. The new CPU plays DVD's flawlessly even during file access and the low wattage CPU plus after-market cooler have drastically quieted this worker-bee system. Overall the upgrade was a success, but this is more thanks to the faster CPU and RAM. As I said, this mobo is going.

The Asus K8V-MX motherboard is mini-ATX form with 800Mhz front-side bus, 1 x AGP x8 slot, and 3 x PCI slots. It is a basic motherboard, doing what I need.

Pros:

• Good name in supplier (???)
• BIOS has more options - still missing a few I'd like to see
• Floppy and IDE connectors up near top where they should be
• Asus has mobo and Cool-and-Quiet tools; but are buggy (it issues an alarm any time the Cool-n-Quiet CPU cuts core voltage to 1.0 volt since it expects core voltage to be 1.4v and also dies with memory faults)

Cons:

• Mobo + CPU were a pain to installed and took nearly 6 hours to get running smoothly
• CPU area is a bit crowded for a good after-market cooler
• Putting main power connector so close to floppy/IDE makes that place very crowded with extra wires - assuming you're not using custom short cables. I prefer the main power connector over near the rear of the mobo since it allows excess cable to neatly mounted below the power supply
• Cannot disable boot sources; only shuffle priorities in limited ways. This means cannot enable floppy boot before hard drive if one also has USB drives plugged in while booting or you cannot boot.
• BIOS doesn't understand low-RPM after-market coolers; I had to disable BIOS control to avoid it complaining about CPU fan RPM during every reboot. This causes the CPU fan to remain at its lowest speed regardless of CPU temperature
• Latest BIOS from Asus (which was to fix the RPM issue) doesn't boot Windows 2000 Pro; the AGP driver hangs the system
• Unlike the PCCHIPS, the Asus "CPU" temperature is a full 20 degree F lower than the K8's direct reading. The PCCHIPS is only 1-2 degrees off.

The first problem I had with the Asus K8V-MX was it would hang upon POST during the USB controller initialization. Of course I started with no drives or AGP/PCI cards in place, but since I have a USB mouse I had been plugging in an external powered DLink USB 2.0 hub. Eventually I discovered the need to plug my mouse directly into the mobo and disconnect the hub to boot successfully. Once I things running better, experimentation taught me that that I needed to change the BIOS setting "USB 2.0 Controller Mode" away from the factory default of HiSpeed/480Mbps to FullSpeed/12mbps. I can understand the desire to default to HiSpeed, I don't see how the BIOS in effect "hangs" when connected to a hub which doesn't appear to support it????

The second problem I had with the Asus K8V-MX was my CoolerMaster KHC-L91-U2 cooper after-market CPU cooler idles at only about 1400 RPM and that causes a POST halt for CPU Fan failure and "Press " error every time I boot. I guess Asus assumes we have one of those 60mm jet turbines whining along at 4000+ RPM. Actually, given the over-clocking reputation of Asus this is one of the LAST problems I would have expected from them. Fortunately (and unfortunately) Asus claimed a BIOS ungrade to v2.11 would solve this problem.

This lead to my third problem. After I upgraded the BIOS to v2.11, the CPU fan error dissappeared but Windows 2000 Pro started hanging a few seconds after the white Windows Logo screen shows up. Trying to boot in Safe Mode also hungs. Eventually with enough goofing around I was able to see a BSOD showing that file viaagp1.sys was failing. The BIOS notes didn't mention any change to AGP support. At this point I pulled my PCI cards out - I hadn't installed my NVidia AGP card yet. Just to make sure this wasn't some driver issue I took an old 30GB hard drive and did a fresh Win 2K pro install without any SP or special drivers. After Win2K was running independly, I used the Asus CD and started to install the Via 4-in-1 driver. It hung during the AGP install. After this, my new Win2K install also hung in exactly the same place. I goofed around looking for BIOS settings to disable or adjust the AGP slot to avoid this hang. Eventually I just rolled back to the old BIOS that came with my motherboard and had to disable the CPU fan support.

My fourth problem was there is no way to disable boot sources and for some reason USB drives seem to be lumped in with Floppy drives. Normally I leave the default order of floppy -> hard drive -> CD-ROM. But once I got the USB setting changed to allow booting with my USB hub, the the BIOS would halt when it detected that the USB thumb drive I often have connected did not include a boot image. It was no big deal to change the order to be hard drive -> CD-ROM -> Floppy since the mobo includes a nice F8 "Boot Menu" that enables me selecting the floppy manually the one or two times a year I'd boot from floppy. But I prefer the "old fashioned" BIOS design with allowed one to only define 1 or 2 boot sources and ignore all others.

Temperature Sensors:

• W83627EHF is a Super-IO chip with serial, parallel, floppy, smart-card; Asus seems to also use it for any fan control.
• K8 CPU has direct readout (per SpeedFan documentation)

SpeedFan details (need v4.30 or higher to see K8 Core Temp):

• CPU of W83627 - is 20 degree F lower than K8's sensor, but reacts to CPU load.
• AUX of W83627 - seems closer to the real CPU temperature - only 5 degrees too cool and also reacts to CPU load.
• System of W83627 - assume is the die temp of Super IO chip
• Core - direct from AMD K8 / A64

My worker-bee system consists of:

• Athlon 64 3000+ (51-watt CPU)
• 1GB DDR400 / PC3200 RAM
• NVidia 6200 AGPx8 graphics card
• Hauppauge PVR 350 PCI card
• Sony DVD-ROM
• 40GB Western Digital as main system drive
• HighPoint SATA PCI card in RAID 1 to a pair of Samsung 200GB drives
• Removable PATA rack; I place archived media files on various 200-300GB drives that can be mounted as required
• All wrapped in a old, clunky mini-tower with bad drive mounting options - I will be moving to a nice Lian Desktop case to keep the height low

PCCHIPS M860 MoBo with A64 CPU

Summary: bought PcChips M860 ATX mobo for use with a new low-watt A64 3000+ CPU. While it has worked satisfactorily, I doubt I'll buy another PcChips mobo.

My first upgrade was from a socket A Athlon XP 2400+ to a socket 754 Athlon 64 3000+ . Gigahertz-wise it is pretty much a wash since they are 2.08 and 2.00 GHz respectively. Comparison tools suggest a 5% boost for normal work and 20-25% if the 64-bit feature is used. While it's hard to detect a 5% improvement, I did notice some peppiness in certain graphics and menu options. Overall, the main value I've seen so far is the cooler and quieter behavior. I've even disconnected 2 of the 4 chassis fans I had running.

The PCCHIPS M860 mother board is ATX form with 800Mhz front-side bus, 1 x AGP x8 slot, and 5 x PCI slots. It is a good basic motherboard, doing what I need.

Pros:

• Mobo + CPU installed and booted very painlessly
• Plenty of space around the CPU for a good after-market cooler
• VIA chip sets have been good to me in the past

Cons:

• BIOS has few options (can be good for some)
• Floppy and IDE ribbons are all at the "bottom" of the mobo, meaning running the ribbon cables up to the normal CD-ROM and drive location nearer the top
• Had to reflash the mobo to obtain meaningful temperature readings
• All of the "latest drivers" at PCCHIPS web site are much older than the CD supplied; the CD being new is nice, but it implies the vendor is pretty lazy in support for older products since they don't even bother to put existing new drivers up
• PCCHIPS offers no tools which show board stats (temp, volts etc). I use these to setup my SpeedFan details. Without this it can be tricky to decode the various temp readings.

Overall the CHCHIPS mobo is suitable for someone like my Mom who just use their computer with a minimum of concern for adjustment. I'll continue to use it until my jump to a dual-core system.

Temperature Sensors:

• IT8712F is a Super-IO chip with serial, parallel, floppy, smart-card; it doesn't seem to used on this mobo for any fan control.
• F7583 appears to be a temperature sensor and fan control chip
• K8 CPU has direct readout (per SpeedFan documentation)

SpeedFan details (need v4.30 or higher to see K8 Core Temp):

• Temp1 of IT8712F - is not connected; is garbage
• Temp2 of IT8712F - assume is die temp of Super IO chip; is 82-84 degree F usually
• Temp3 of IT8712F - seems to be not connected; is garbage
• Local of F7583 - is mobo / chipset; controls Chassis fan?
• Remote of F7583 - is CPU plus 1-2 degrees F; controls CPU fan?
• Core - direct from AMD K8 / A64

My for-fun system is good & basic; not a power system, but good enough the games I play and the work I do:

• Athlon 64 3000+ (51-watt CPU)
• 1GB DDR400 / PC3200 RAM
• ATI radeon X1600 AGP graphics (good for games like Oblivion)
• HP DVD R/W with LightScribe
• LiteOn DVD-ROM
• 80GB Samsung drive
• Creative Audigy 4 Sound Card
• All wrapped in a nice CoolMaster aluminum ATX case

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (51-watt)

Summary: to upgrade yet reuse my existing RAM and AGP card, I upgraded to an old socket 754 AMD Athlon 64. Given total cost (with shipping) was under $100, I'd say result was successful.

You all know how computer "fixes" tend to creep and grow. This upgrade started because I decided my worker-bee system (acting as file server, DVR, and media player) was starting to stress its old Celeron CPU - even with a whiny stock cooler I'd seen the temperature hit 170+ degrees F. So I figured why not upgrade the AMD Athlon XP in my for-fun system and hand-me-down the XP CPU to be the worker-bee? The XP rarely hits 105 degree F.

Well, as much as I'd love moving to a spank'n new AMD X2 dual core (blah-blah-blah), that would mean $300+ for new DDR2 RAM, $150 for an AM2 motherboad, $200 for new PCI-express graphics card worth owning, not to mention the $100-300 for a good CPU. Plus with Intel's latest DuoCore Extreme beating AMD's X2 by 30% to 70% I suspect this next year is going to be an amazing technology race. Next summer the dual-core (or quad-core) CPU will be perhaps a few 100% faster and take less power.

So I started by looking through motherboards for something with an AGP slot (for my ATI Radeon X1600 AGPx8) and using DDR400 / PC3200 RAM. It turned out the "newest" motherboards to support this combination were the socket 754. This limited me to an AMD Athlon 64 - something one doesn't see for sale much. I finally found a nice $58 deal at
newegg (dot) com; adding an old S754 motherboard means the entire upgrade is in the $80 to $100 range.

Digging a little deeper, it turns out this particular A64 model is actually something in the Mobile Athlon family, so it burns a maximum of 51-watts, instead of the standard 89-watts of earlier Athlon 64 processors. This struck me as a fortunate "accident" since cooler means quieter and that is something I value.

Basic specs from AMD's web site: Details for this AMD Athlon 64

• Processor AMD Athlon™ 64, Model 3000+ (P/N ADA3000AIK4BX)
• Operating Mode: 32/64, Stepping E6
• Frequency: 2000Mhz, HT Speed: 1600
• Voltage: 1.40V Max Temp: 65°C
• Thermal Power: 51W (older models were 89w)
• L1 Cache: 128KB, L2 Cache: 512KB
• CMOS Technology 90nm SOI, Socket S754

So ... where is the $$ "creep" in project? Well, it started with a $29 copper after-market cooler since I wanted to leverage the value of my new low-watt CPU. After getting it running, this sweet little A64 idles at about 77 degree F and heats up to about 85 degrees F max when fully loaded! Upon power-up, it is satisyfing to hear the turbine-whine of the cooler drop to silence in a few seconds as the motherboard takes control of the cooler fan. In fact, for the first few days I had this urge to keep looking at the fan to make sure it wasn't faulty because it runs so quiet.

My worker-bee system is in a mini-ATX case and only had PC2100 RAM. So I started looking at min-ATX Socket A motherboards for my recylced XP ... long-store short I just decided to buy a second A64 with S754 mini-ATX mobo and another 1GB of PC3200 RAM. Since my worker-bee system runs 24/7 I liked the idea of the quieter fans. So I guess my initial $100 budget has expanded to 2 x $100 for 2 CPU and mobo, $60 for 2 nice after-market coolers, and $200 for 1GB of DDR400 RAM. At least I did suppress the desire to upgrade my for-fun system to 2GB RAM. Hopefully next summer I can re-upgrade the for-fun system to an dula-core AM2.