PC Hardware in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Installing a Slotted Processor

Although mainstream slotted processors are now obsolescent, they remain in limited distribution. A faster slotted processor may be a worthwhile upgrade for an older system. Installing a faster slotted processor can greatly improve system performance and extend the useful life of an otherwise obsolescent system.

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For example, until late 2001 our Internet gateway system was an older Celeron. We’d been having some problems with it locking up, which we suspected were caused by the commodity memory installed in it or by the undersized power supply. One day, after three lockups in as many hours, Robert (who is a procrastinator) finally decided to do something about it. We tore down that system and replaced the power supply with an Antec unit and the 64 MB of generic memory with a 128 MB Crucial stick.

While we had the case open for a cleaning and general upgrading, we noticed that the system still had its original Celeron/333 installed, so we decided to replace it with a Pentium II/450 that we’d pulled from another system. The faster clock speed and larger L2 cache of the Pentium II yield performance nearly twice that of the original processor, which takes that system from marginal to more than sufficient for the gateway and mail server tasks to which it is devoted. For a cost of less than $100 (even if we’d had to buy the processor), we now have a reliable Internet gateway system that we expect to continue using for several years to come.

Installing a ...