LebGeeks

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#1 May 19 2005

jayinferno
Member

Mercury Boards

Hey all. Quick question: are the Mercury Motherboards reliable ?

I have and intel 850 (Those boards that first came with Pentium 4 and were taked from the market afterwards for being faulty) with 128 RDRams... i need RDRams but no one is selling them anymore, and if they are, they are high on $$, so am thinking maybe i buy a new M-board with DDRams for a cheaper price. Are Mercury MBoards good or i should stick with Intel ?

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#2 May 19 2005

rolf
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

I like MSI, although they are not always reliable. Intel is exellent quality, but  they're usually not overclockable. There were mercury boards at the office a couble of years ago (p3 stuff), and we never had a problem with them, but I dont know if they're still reliable today, and if they offer good features and performance.

This site has lots of boards:
http://www.pcandparts.com/price.htm

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#3 May 19 2005

darkstar
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

As rolf said mercury boards are ok , and i currently run on a msi 865 neo2 mobo , its fine very reliable and supports overclocking :) if u like to push your pc to the limit .

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#4 May 19 2005

rolf
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

I have the same board, darkstar.
Overclocked my P2 2.8 (fsb 800, but the old generation C or D I forgot, you know the one that doesnt heat up a lot)  to 3.0 FSB 850. I can go up to 3.3, but the fan will get noisy.
I have put on it the fan of the p4 3.0 D, and a good case with a side air intake for the cpu, and installed a program that regulates the fan speeds, and now my PC is super silent, I leave it on 24/24 in my bedroom and it's hardly noticeable.
I'm such a geek!

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#5 May 19 2005

mahdoum
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

Rolf I want you to write for us an article on how to overclock a pc, and how we'd go around cooling it and how to keep the pc silent. I would appreciate it.

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#6 May 19 2005

rolf
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

Rolf I want you to write for us an article on how to overclock a pc, and how we'd go around cooling it and how to keep the pc silent. I would appreciate it.

OK.
When i'll have the time.

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#7 May 19 2005

karim soubra
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

mahdoum's idea is very good but the subject is very big
i recommend breaking it into small pieces
first  cooling
second overclocking
ending with a convegence betwween the after all they are connected
i have read alot of article and did some overclocking so if anybody needs advice on how to or recomendation i am availabe

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#8 May 19 2005

rolf
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

Well I have to say my problem on the topic is that I mounted my PC more than 6 month ago, hell maybe even a year ago, I'm not sure.
So I wont be able to recommend any recent hardware. The hardware that I use is mostly unavailable now, so that wont be very helpful.

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#9 May 19 2005

mahdoum
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

just give us a general idea, I've personally never overclocked my pc becuase i have nooo idea how, haven't bothered to check for any docs either. And one of the biggest problem in jeddah is the heat, sometimes my fan is sooo loud becuase the pc is hot (even with the ac turned on)

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#10 May 19 2005

karim soubra
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

what are ue specs rolf?

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#11 May 19 2005

rolf
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

WHat do you mean?
My OC speed? Written in my 2nd post on this thread.

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#12 May 19 2005

rolf
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

mahdoum I can make an article on "proper air cooling for maximum efficiency with minimum noise"
Or how to build a PC that stays cool and doesn't make noise

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#13 May 19 2005

mahdoum
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

yeah that'd be cool. I'm actually more interested in the clocking more  so if you can do that first.

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#14 May 19 2005

karim soubra
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

overclocking without proper cooling ie water cooling or phase change smells big trouble (mostly from the motherboard it will fry it)

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#15 May 20 2005

jayinferno
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

i dunno.. i will work by ur advice, actually i will call the guy that told me he would get me a good deal and get back to u guyz with the MBoard specs so u give me an advice.

Cheers

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#16 May 20 2005

rolf
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

yeah good idea  :)

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#17 May 20 2005

darkstar
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

I have the same board, darkstar.
Overclocked my P2 2.8 (fsb 800, but the old generation C or D I forgot, you know the one that doesnt heat up a lot)  to 3.0 FSB 850. I can go up to 3.3, but the fan will get noisy.
I have put on it the fan of the p4 3.0 D, and a good case with a side air intake for the cpu, and installed a program that regulates the fan speeds, and now my PC is super silent, I leave it on 24/24 in my bedroom and it's hardly noticeable.
I'm such a geek!

Thats really neat , but careful man always keep your temp. monitored and i advise u to upgrade your cooling system, a fan might not be able to cool of all that heat, I once thought about Ocing but then i checked some reviews and tutorials and decided not to since my cooling is still done through the fan. Btw u can also oc your memory , try to play with the cas,ras to cas and ras latency , those also can really boost your memory performance!!

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#18 May 20 2005

rolf
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

Yeah, I've played around with my memory!

My temp is monitored with "speedfan", which automatically varies the speed of the CPU fan. The CPU never goes over 62, but the board recently went up to 58, which is, uh, worriyng. but if I speed up the case fan it should be OK.

I was very careful when coosing the parts of my PC: my case has 2 80mm rear fans, a side air intake (with a tunnel) to bring fresh air directly to the CPU. The CPU is a 1st generation P4-800, wich are way cooler than the actual ones. The CPU fan is the intel fan provided with the P4 3.2ghz D(or E?), which gives up way more heat than my current CPU. So I can afford to run it at low speed most of the time.

So I dont think that I can upgrade my cooling system. I could get some better air cooling system for the CPU from the US or Europe. But in lebanon, the only better CPU fan/heatsink that I could find are these 7000 rpm CPU fans that sound like a vacuum cleaner and will keep me awake! Liquid cooling is nice, but expensive, and I'll have to order it from the outside too.

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#19 May 21 2005

karim soubra
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

pc and parts offers water cooling kit but only for the cpu
i think it is a global win kit

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#20 May 21 2005

darkstar
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

Yeah, I've played around with my memory!

My temp is monitored with "speedfan", which automatically varies the speed of the CPU fan. The CPU never goes over 62, but the board recently went up to 58, which is, uh, worriyng. but if I speed up the case fan it should be OK.

I was very careful when coosing the parts of my PC: my case has 2 80mm rear fans, a side air intake (with a tunnel) to bring fresh air directly to the CPU. The CPU is a 1st generation P4-800, wich are way cooler than the actual ones. The CPU fan is the intel fan provided with the P4 3.2ghz D(or E?), which gives up way more heat than my current CPU. So I can afford to run it at low speed most of the time.

So I dont think that I can upgrade my cooling system. I could get some better air cooling system for the CPU from the US or Europe. But in lebanon, the only better CPU fan/heatsink that I could find are these 7000 rpm CPU fans that sound like a vacuum cleaner and will keep me awake! Liquid cooling is nice, but expensive, and I'll have to order it from the outside too.


Why dont u use corecenter instead of speedfan , corecenter comes with your mobo's cds or does speedfan have any additional features?

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#21 May 22 2005

rolf
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

In speedfan, you setup a minumum temperature and a maximum temperatur, and the program will variate the CPU fan speed to keep it whithin that range.
Corecell only has an "auto" mode, where you cannot setup the desired temperature
Speedfan also shows the CPU temperature in the tray when minimized. And it also monitors the hard drive using SMART.

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#22 May 22 2005

mahdoum
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

I found a shop that specialises in cooling, their water cooling systems range from around $213 down to $133. What'd you guys think about the prices?

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#23 May 23 2005

rolf
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

Exellent prices for lebanon
You mean I can have a complete water cooling system at 133$?

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#24 May 23 2005

mahdoum
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

yeah that's the cheapest

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#25 May 23 2005

rolf
Member

Re: Mercury Boards

Is that in lebanon?
Cause if it is, can you give me the address, pleease  :oops:

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