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Please help newbie do P3 upgrade for MEB-VM

Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2008 1:07 pm
by unckybob
Here's a short question from a newbie that is relatively quick to pick up on things. Please take a look at it and leave me a note if you can.

Presently running this system:

HP Pavilion 4550Z with
MEB-VM motherboard (sometimes referred to as an Asus or sometimes Falcon)
HP Part Number: 5184-2705
Celeron (Mendocino) 466MHz 128k Cache
440/ZX rev. 03 chipset
Phoenix BIOS 4.0 Release 6.0.D
Rev. 1.10 6/25/99

Want to upgrade to P3. I already have a particular P3:

Pentium III (Coppermine) 1000MHz (will fit the PGA370 socket on the board)
256k Cache, SL4C8

You may search for the User Manual for the Asus MEB-VM. You may find it here:

http://www.motherboards.org/files/manua ... vm-101.pdf
(This isn't it. This mobo is has the 440/BX chipset. My board has the 440/ZX.)

Can I just put the processor in the board and fire it up, or will that potentially fry something?

If I can't upgrade to the above P3, I'm wondering what is the fastest P3 I can put in it?
I've done just as much homework on this as I can dig up being a newbie and all. I'm wondering if someone out there with a little more experience can help out. Please help.

Re: Please help newbie do P3 upgrade for MEB-VM

Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2008 1:28 pm
by martini161
if you seat the procesor correctly and put on the heatsink you should be fine. no personal experiences with p3's though

Re: Please help newbie do P3 upgrade for MEB-VM

Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2008 2:02 pm
by unckybob
I heard that it will work with a 733MHz P3. Is making the change going to be worthwhile?

Re: Please help newbie do P3 upgrade for MEB-VM

Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2008 3:47 pm
by martini161
if it were me personally i would stop putting money into that rig and start saving for a new one. for 5 or 6 hundred dollars you can build a pc that can blow that thing out of the water in every way imaginable

Re: Please help newbie do P3 upgrade for MEB-VM

Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2008 9:30 pm
by Methious
I'd stop tossing money at it. For a couple of hundred you can throw in a P35 board and an E-2180 with a decent set of ram and it'd put that rig in the dirt.

Re: Please help newbie do P3 upgrade for MEB-VM

Posted: Sat Sep 13, 2008 12:14 am
by stopthekilling77
Methious wrote:I'd stop tossing money at it. For a couple of hundred you can throw in a P35 board and an E-2180 with a decent set of ram and it'd put that rig in the dirt.
Agreed. if youre going to spend money on this machine, the most bang for your buck will be in replacing your motherboard, ram, and CPU. if you went with a basic board youre looking at $50, ram $35-40 for a 2Gb kit, and that E2180 dual core pentium would run just $70. for ~$155 or more you would see a REAL "worthwhile" change.

thats just my 2 cents though :)

Re: Please help newbie do P3 upgrade for MEB-VM

Posted: Sat Sep 13, 2008 6:51 am
by unckybob
Thanks for all the advice. I've got 3 computers. I just installed Ubuntu on this one and my fastest machine. Whenever I try something new I like to do it to this one first. If something goes wrong, I'll just reinstall the operating system. But I'm afraid to do anything to my fast machine, because I risk losing data, or not being able to undo something. I can get a P3 700/256/100 for around $12. I don't mind spending a little money even if would only make the thing twice as fast. It takes about 2:45 minutes to start up. I timed one operation on both. The fast machine took 6 seconds the slow one 45. All the same, I like having a cheapo machine to experiment on. I really am enthusiastic about Linux, but I'm still just a newbie and I often find myself making mistakes, or just trying something that is potentially dangerous.