PROCESSOR

     The processor or CPU (central processing unit) is the brain of the computer, it basically controls everything and does most all of the calculations, processor speed is measured in MHz (megahertz). 1Mhz means 1 million calculations per second. The Pentium 4 processor that I chose is clocked at 1500Mhz or 1.5Ghz (gigahertz) for short. It is capable of doing 1,500,000,000 calculations per second. Which makes it the fastest consumer processor in the world. It is fairly large in size, the chip is around one square inch in size, which makes it twice the size of the Pentium III processor. Because they both use .18 micron technology, which means that each of the 40 million transistors in the processor measure 180 nanometers. The Pentium III only had about 24 million transistors inside of it which would logically make this chip twice the size. It has a 400Mhz front side bus, and 256K (kilobytes) of Level 2 cache, which is basically the processor's own on board memory. The some of the newer Athalon processors have 512K of cache, but they only have a 200Mhz front side bus. So since the P4 has such a fast front side bus speed. There is not a lot of need for more cache since it can move data so quickly too and from the cache. Next you will see a picture of a heat sink designed for the P4, make sure that you get a good one like this. There will be some thermal glue on the bottom of the processor that looks like gum. Don't take it off! it helps suck the heat off of the processor and on to the heat sink and fan where it can dissipate the heat faster.

     The Pentium 4 processor was designed by Intel to be a high speed processor and excel at video editing, video compression, music compression, and 3D rendering. There have been stories of the 1.2Ghz AMD Thunderbird processors beating the P4 on business benchmarks. I cannot say if this is true or not, but I only know that you are not going to put the 1.5Ghz P4 to use by running it in an office computer. It is made for blazing through graphics and audio as if it were a hot knife through butter. Which the AMD Thunderbird processors, cannot even begin to keep up with the P4 in those areas. When the Pentium 4 first shipped at the end of 2000, there were some processors that were had defects in them, I'm not sure as what the problems are, but I know that Intel had recalled a large bunch of them. I am not for sure If I have one or not, but I am pretty sure that I do, since my PC is built perfect and still has defects such as Windows ME will freeze when I tell it to restart. Windows 2000 will randomly freeze when I am playing DVDs and so on. I will have to call up Intel to see if my chip is one of the bad ones. Don't worry about that now. They corrected the problem and any P4 processor you buy now should work like a charm.

     I gave the Intel Pentium 4 processor a 99% in overall greatness. I would give it just that one percent but I does run a little hot, 150 degrees f. While the Athalon processors will run at 100 degrees f. I am very pleased though. I would not trade my P4 for anything in the world, until the Pentium 5 comes out! The chip cost me $939 while the heat sink only cost $40.

     This really has nothing to do with the tutorial, but When I ordered the processor from SPARTAN TECHNOLOGIES INC. They sent me the wrong fan, I did not know which fan I needed as their web site did not tell me anything, The guy on the phone said that "The Golden orb will be perfect for you." So they sent me the fan, and it don't even fit on the processor. Just a word of warning, that this company really screwed me over when I had to end up buying two heat sinks from them, just because one of their employees was stupid. That did not stop me though, I decided that since my motherboard would automatically shut down when the CPU got to hot. I booted up my computer for the first time when it was finished, and it took less than 30 seconds for the processor to exceed 200 degrees, and lock up. That was only while I was checking the BIOS (basic input output system) on my computer. So I had to leave the tower on it's side and stick the heat sink and fan on the processor. Since it was not made for the P4 it would not snap on, that is why I had to have the case laying on it's side, so that gravity would do the work for me. It worked, I could run the computer all day and it would never overheat, and that is what I did for a whole week until they sent me the right heat sink. I give SPARTAN TECHNOLOGIES INC. two thumbs way, way down. for screwing up my order and making me waste $20 on a fan I cant even use now!

Even the logo kicks butt!