Help finding a ConRoe865PE

[bpatterson07]

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to build a home HTPC. I have the 4670 AGP card, ram, processor, HDD's, and all other components required.

Due to the limitations of the current Intel mobo (only P4, 2gb ram, and doesn't recognize large storage) I'd like to upgrade the mobo.

It seems through research the best fit, and from what I gather the last great AGP motherboard, is the ASRock ConRoe865PE. I cannot seem to find a place to buy this anywhere.

Can someone offer advice or perhaps a suitable substitute? I really don't feel like shelling out cash for a new pcie video card, processor, and mother board.

 

[qubit]

This is well obsolete kit now, so I'm afraid that you'll have to see if you can get it used on eBay, Craigslist etc. Personally, I wouldn't feel confident buying like this so would just bite the bullet and buy new. A system based on an AMD APU is very affordable and will work very well as a HTPC.

Alternatively, you could put a wanted add in the trading section of TPU and see if you get lucky.

Finally, don't forget that for such old hardware, you're likely to encounter driver issues and it may well not work with Windows 7, 8 or even the old Vista.

I strongly recommend buying new and saving yourself the headache.

 

[Solaris17]

This is well obsolete kit now, so I'm afraid that you'll have to see if you can get it used on eBay, Craigslist etc. Personally, I wouldn't feel confident buying like this so would just bite the bullet and buy new. A system based on an AMD APU is very affordable and will work very well as a HTPC.

Alternatively, you could put a wanted add in the trading section of TPU and see if you get lucky.

Finally, don't forget that for such old hardware, you're likely to encounter driver issues and it may well not work with Windows 7, 8 or even the old Vista.

I strongly recommend buying new and saving yourself the headache.

Agreed I love bringing the past back to life and for a bit its fun and exciting and reminds me of the skill alot of us used to need on a dialy basis but I wouldnt go out of my way now adays to make it work. for a few hundred if that you can get an APU system that would destroy that in power savings performance noise and heat.

 

[Nordic]

You might want to consider a product like this for an htpc.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135363

 

[bpatterson07]

Just seems a waste sort of throwing a bunch of money at it. I do nothing on it but torrent and XBMC. :Literally nothing else as I have other PC's for those purposes. The tower is done and quiet.

Intel D875PBZ mobo
Intel P4 3.2ghz
2gb ddr400 ram
HIS Radeon HD 4670 agp
1 Sata 80gb primary
1 IDE 500gb storage

The problems started with storage capacity. Ordered a WD green 3tb on a whim (should have known better) and of course it doesn't work with the board.

I guess I have two options, I'd prefer the cheaper one obviously as much as I'd like to build a mega HTPC, it's just not practical for the use of the system.

Get a "new" AGP style motherboard or dump most of what I have and start from scratch.

If I did have to start from scratch, I'd be able to only harvest the storage. Would end up buying new case, mobo, cpu, ram, etc to the tune of roughly $300-$40 I'd imagine.

 

[bpatterson07]

After a bit more research, thoughts on these components and moving only the 2 HDD's over from harvest possibly? I do have everything in a tower now which isn't ideal...

$79.99 Antec ISK 300-150 Mini-ITX http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0035FIS2O/?tag=tec06d-20

$69.99 A6-6400K http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CPLGFM4/?tag=tec06d-20

$106.49 Gigabyte FM2 A85X http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DU01DC6/?tag=tec06d-20

$31.77 Kingston HyperX Blu 2GB http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DU01DC6/?tag=tec06d-20

Don't really need a blu-ray drive or SSD (perhaps later). Case fan (Noctua NF-R8 PWM) and CPU cooler (Noctua NH-L9A) to be determined if heat or noise is a problem. Might go 4gb or 8gb on the ram. System would be running W7 64-bit.

Thoughts on this? Should I be scrimping on certain areas? Mobo doesn't need wi-fi either, waste of money on a feature.

 

[lastcalaveras]

Would probably be best to make sure you get faster and higher capacity memory, because APUs' love faster memory. Otherwise is you wanna skimp do it to the motherboard. Go down to a A75 chipset.

 

[kniaugaudiskis]

Well, I have the Conroe 865PE laying around which is still in great working condition. I used this board together with Core 2 Duo E4600 2.4GHz CPU which still sits in it, so if you're still interested PM me with the price you're willing to pay for either the board alone or both the board and the CPU I'm from Europe so the shipping to the US would cost around $20.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Well, I have the Conroe 865PE laying around which is still in great working condition. I used this board together with Core 2 Duo E4600 2.4GHz CPU which still sits in it, so if you're still interested PM me with the price you're willing to pay for either the board alone or both the board and the CPU I'm from Europe so the shipping to the US would cost around $20.

+1 to this. Theres a thread in this section for all of us current and former conroe 865 owners. I picked mine up used and tweaked the heck out of it. Playing with retro hardware is very satisfying. So: i say take his offer, bc not many of them were ever made.

 

[Mussels]

why not buy an entirely new system with onboard video? if its for a HTPC even the lowest of low end IGP's today will handle HD content fine.


a socket FM2 system with quad core + IGP and 4GB of DDR3 ram will cost you very little, be faster, use less power, and last a lot longer.

 

[kn00tcn]

wait, so you have a fully working build already, why dont you just run the 3tb in a usb enclosure or esata if the mobo has it? or if you have another comp that's always on or on at the same time, just access the files over the lan?

the cpu & 4670 would be my only concern when something like 1080p playback is too slow or buggy

 

[Mussels]

wait, so you have a fully working build already, why dont you just run the 3tb in a usb enclosure or esata if the mobo has it? or if you have another comp that's always on or on at the same time, just access the files over the lan?

the cpu & 4670 would be my only concern when something like 1080p playback is too slow or buggy

a 2ghz core 2 duo with 16MB onboard video can play back 1080p files through software decoding just fine. people always over-estimate the hardware needed for video playback (and that 99% of the time it doesnt use the GPU, only for direct DVD or BD playback if enabled in your media software)

 

[bpatterson07]

Would probably be best to make sure you get faster and higher capacity memory, because APUs' love faster memory. Otherwise is you wanna skimp do it to the motherboard. Go down to a A75 chipset.

What would you recommend for the memory? 4g or 8g? Speeds? Could you recommend something specific that would go well with the APU?

 

[bpatterson07]

Thank you for the feedback everyone. My wife has helped once I showed her the little black box versus the current big ugly tower. I'll be doing a new build it seems for aeshetics and noise.

 

[qubit]

a 2ghz core 2 duo with 16MB onboard video can play back 1080p files through software decoding just fine. people always over-estimate the hardware needed for video playback (and that 99% of the time it doesnt use the GPU, only for direct DVD or BD playback if enabled in your media software)

This reminds me of my friend's HTPC setup. He uses Media Portal which has a client/server architecture, hence he can watch TV on several PCs over his home network, with the tuners and recordings sitting on the server. It's all very cool and works smoothly.

One of his PCs has got an old Intel E8400 socket 775 CPU in it and some old AMD graphics card, I forget which model. When he turns on GPU acceleration you get lots of frame drops and visible stutters. When he turns it off the playback is smooth as butter, with higher CPU usage. This happens equally with SD & HD content.

I gave him my GT 520 to help him troubleshoot it, but the same thing happened. On just that one system he has the problem and we still haven't got to the bottom of it. He's running Windows 7 64-bit on it.

So, not trying to turn this into a troubleshooting thread, but just making an example for your point that you don't need so much processing power to decode HD video, which works fine in software mode on this PC.

Thank you for the feedback everyone. My wife has helped once I showed her the little black box versus the current big ugly tower. I'll be doing a new build it seems for aeshetics and noise.

Great decision, let us know what bits you buy. You may like to try the free, open source Media Portal I described above. It's really great DVR software.

 

[kn00tcn]

a 2ghz core 2 duo with 16MB onboard video can play back 1080p files through software decoding just fine. people always over-estimate the hardware needed for video playback (and that 99% of the time it doesnt use the GPU, only for direct DVD or BD playback if enabled in your media software)

i was talking about OP's P4, which certainly is not good enough for 1080p if DXVA isnt assisting

i could not play the 720p duke nukem forever teaser (where he's lifting a weight) on both my p4 2.3ghz OC & athlonxp-m 2.4ghz OC

also experimented with anime episode & trailer x264 encodes, i remember one case where the p4 was too slow with ffdshow while coreavc managed to play it (lower cpu usage as advertised, coreavc has delivered its promise for years)

 

[Mussels]

i was talking about OP's P4, which certainly is not good enough for 1080p if DXVA isnt assisting

i could not play the 720p duke nukem forever teaser (where he's lifting a weight) on both my p4 2.3ghz OC & athlonxp-m 2.4ghz OC

also experimented with anime episode & trailer x264 encodes, i remember one case where the p4 was too slow with ffdshow while coreavc managed to play it (lower cpu usage as advertised, coreavc has delivered its promise for years)

use MPC-HC, FFDSHOW, and use the directX 7 renderer (i think its overlay mixer renderer, disables aero) - performance will be massively faster, its how i watch anime on my 1.6GHz intel atom netbook.

 

[kn00tcn]

use MPC-HC, FFDSHOW, and use the directX 7 renderer (i think its overlay mixer renderer, disables aero) - performance will be massively faster, its how i watch anime on my 1.6GHz intel atom netbook.

well it's possible ffdshow has improved a lot from those tests half a decade ago, the p4 is running windows 2k & the athlon is xp

how does an atom compare? i'm not sure what benchmarks we should look at, tell me your model number & i'll research sometime

 

[Mussels]

well it's possible ffdshow has improved a lot from those tests half a decade ago, the p4 is running windows 2k & the athlon is xp

how does an atom compare? i'm not sure what benchmarks we should look at, tell me your model number & i'll research sometime

dragging it out a bit, but lets just say: the atom is crap. a p4 2ghz is likely faster. all i wanted to do was inform the OP that grabbing a modern power efficient setup will be a 'better' choice - but not neccesarily cheaper (if he can get what he wants for $20 as was offered, hard to beat that value)

 

[rtwjunkie]

And...there's alot of fun in getting an old piece or pieces of hardware working in a modern environment! We are enthusiasts at TPU after all!

 

[bpatterson07]

I had another thread opened to look at advice on the system build, you can check it here if you would like:

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/advice-on-new-htpc-budget-build.196244/

 

[kn00tcn]

dragging it out a bit, but lets just say: the atom is crap. a p4 2ghz is likely faster. all i wanted to do was inform the OP that grabbing a modern power efficient setup will be a 'better' choice - but not neccesarily cheaper (if he can get what he wants for $20 as was offered, hard to beat that value)

do you use any form of DXVA? even if it's an integrated gpu

i like my videos accurately displayed & possibly post processed purely on the cpu

 

[kendr012009]

bpatterson07, where are you located?

If you are still looking for a conroe865pe I have one that is currently unused, it has the modified pctrieber 1.72 bios to allow the use of wolfdale 45nm cpu's and unlocked ram multipliers for overclocking.

I used it with an 800fsb e5800 3.2ghz (ran @3.6ghz for a while) so that I could keep the ram at ddr400 speed, and a hd4650 with 3gb ddr400 ram, I had perfect bluray playback with this computer and reasonable gaming performance.

I ran it like that for a few years and it played games like bioshock, crisis and assassins creed pretty well,

when I upgraded I gave it to my grandfather, he used it for a while but he started getting a usb over power warning from his front ports (different case than the one I had it in) which is why it was retired,

I don't know if it was down to the device he was using, the ports on the case or the motherboard or his psu we just unplugged the front usb header to be safe until I got stuff together for a new build for him,

Was running fine otherwise, it comes with the backplate and is yours for the cost of postage (I'm in the u.k.) if you want it.