crap:

Socket 423 vs. Socket 478

the processor i had was for the socket on the right, and her computer had the one on the left. i won't get into the history of the two, but if you need to know you can look at the site where i stole the pictures (wikipedia)

so i found a company by the name of powerleap that made an adapter that let me put one in the other. so i asked granny for another $100 bucks, bought it and waited. tah dah:

ok, so the box isn't very impressive, but the adapter itself looked pretty sweet and it even comes with a modified cpu fan (NOT copper) that sits higher to allow for the added tallness of the adapter.

so i yanked out the old 1.5ghz processor (literally - the fan stuck to it even after running the machine at full blast for an hour - thanks compaq). then, i put the 2.4ghz in the adapter and tried to put the adapter into the socket. i say tried because it took me entirely too long to figure out which pin was pin 1. (i resorted to looking at the picture in the documentation and guessing) and even after i 'figured it out' i couldn't put the adapter in because its power cord gets in the way of the lever on the motherboard. now in the instructions it says to plug it in after you install it, which would make this my fault, but it was already plugged in out of the box.

annoying.

so after struggling to unhook the power cable the whole plastic housing just slipped off exposing the bare prongs:

well at least now i was able to install the damn thing - so i did. i reattached (re-slid) the power back on it, coated the processor and heat sink with some artic silver (which i had to make a trip to my house for because the adapter didn't come with any sort of thermal compound) and stuck it in:

now i tried to use the cpu fan clips powerleap provided me with the kit, but they didn't work worth a shit so i used the ones off the old processor fan instead.

finally.

so i hook everything back up, pressed the power button, and...

nothing.

so i took the pc back out, opened it up, took off the cpu fan, unslid the adapter power, removed the adapter, removed the new cpu, put the new cpu back in the adapter, put the adapter back in, reslid the power, put the fan back on, closed the case, and reconnected everything

and   it   worked.

how, i don't know, maybe something wasn't sitting properly?

 now lets update her cd reader/burner to a dvd reader/burner:

wow, that was easiest and cheapest ($60) thing yet. congratulations mimi, you can now burn dvd's to your hearts content:

conclusions:

the adapter did what it was supposed to, and it seemed better made than what i was finding on ebay. installing it was a bit of a pain, but i've been through worse.

i ran some number before and after and here's what i got:

1.5GHZ P4 Prime95 benchmark total time: 32.01865

2.4GHZ P4 Prime95 benchmark total time: 23.98167

that's a 25% cut in time, which isn't bad at all. this can be contributed to the higher clock speed and more L2 cache on the 'northwood' type P4s. don't expect a higher bus speed, though, it's going to remain at 400mhz (not 533).

for ~$260 (not including the processor) this was a much cheaper alternative to buying a new pc