Introduction

The noise and sawdust (or styro puffies and packing slips) of intensive PC construction have filled Damage Labs for the past few weeks. I have slaved away at building not one, not two, but three whole PCs based on the hottest hardware combo of the moment: Abit’s BH6 motherboard and Intel’s Celeron 300A CPU. My aim: to build a couple of really excellent PCs for some friends, then to bring my work to its culmination in the new pride of Damage Labs: the DamageBox.

My system of the previous three years, the Ivory Tower, served me well during its long journey from a lowly Gateway 2000 Pentium 100 with a whopping 16 megs of RAM to its more muscular present form; virtually every important component was replaced at least once with nary a whimper of trouble. But two Voodoo generations into the 3D hardware revolution, the ol’ Tower’s K6 was huffin’ and puffin’ a bit more often than I liked, its Abit IT5H motherboard couldn’t support a K6-2, and the Tower’s AT case form factor was keeping me down. (Not to mention its ungodly slow Quantum Bigfoot hard drive was causing Dr. Damage to have horrendous flashbacks involving Commodore 64 floppy drives.) The solution was clear: the Ivory Tower would become a second system and a new, brutally competent DamageBox would take its place as the centerpiece of Damage Labs.

This new box, I pledged, would make absolutely no apologies for its performance in any given area. Weeks of intensive research at Damage Labs ensued. Watching, waiting, and saving up my hard-earned Damage dollars, I waited for the right moment, and… Abit released their unexpected—and unexpectedly wonderful—BH6 motherboard. Tricked out with jumperless everything, special overclocking options, and general excellence, the BH6 instantly became the leading candidate for DamageBox motherhood. Then fate made itself absolutely conspicuous: Intel prepped its Mendocino core for production and Tom (of Tom’s Hardware Page fame) clocked one up to 450MHz and showed the PII-450 who’s boss. The spec for the DamageBox was sealed, orders were placed, and soon, a pair of "prototype" BH6 machines went into production.

Once the two prototypes were finished and ready for delivery to their respective owners (friends of mine), construction of the DamageBox began in earnest. Well, in truth, construction of the DamageBox took one (long) evening. I got home from work Friday night, ripped all the tasty bits out of the Ivory Tower (Voodoo2 and Riva 128 cards, Aureal Vortex sound card, PCI NIC, etc.), built the DamageBox, and re-built the Ivory Tower with some less-tasty bits (Lightspeed 128 card, SoundBlaster 32, ISA NIC, etc.). It was a marathon PC-building session that lasted past 2AM. The result: for a brief, shining moment I sat at the pinnacle of PC technology, just ahead of the constant creep of technology.

To celebrate, I played Unreal. Fluidly.

It was breathtaking, but that’s another story. What I’d like to do here is take a look at each of the components in the DamageBox, subsystem by subsystem, offering my impressions and some justifications for choosing the components that I did. We’ll start with a list of the specs, then I’ll dive right in…

System Specs

The Specs:

Here are the specs for the DamageBox.  Many of the components were purchased new and plunked right into this machine, but most of 'em lived in my previous system for at least a while.  Some of 'em are downright ancient, like the NIC.  But hey, it's just a NIC, and heck, it is PCI.

System core:

• Intel Celeron 300A CPU

• ABIT BH6 motherboard (Intel 440BX chipset)

• 256MB PC100 SDRAM

Enclosure/Cooling:

• SuperMicro SC750 full-tower ATX case w/300W power supply

• 3 80mm Sunon ball-bearing fans

• Vantec Celeron heatsink/fan

Storage:

• Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 2500 10GB, 7200-rpm hard drive

• Asus 40X UDMA CD-ROM drive

• Iomega ATAPI 100MB Zip removable drive

• Uhh, some floppy drive 

 Video:

• STB Velocity 128 4MB PCI video card (NVIDIA Riva 128 chipset)

• Diamond Monster 3D II PCI 3D-accelerator card (3DFX Voodoo2 chipset)

• CTX PR710 17" monitor (Trinitron tube)

• Belkin BNC-to-VGA monitor cable

Audio:

• Aztech PCI 338 sound card (Aureal Vortex chipset) 

• Cambridge Soundworks PCWorks speakers 

Communications:

• Diamond SupraExpress 56i ISA V.90 modem

• SMC EtherPower PCI 10Mbps NIC

• SohoWare 5-port 10Mbps Ethernet hub

  (The NIC and hub are for the Damage Labs LAN)

Input:

• Logitech FirstMouse Plus

• Microsoft Natural Keyboard Elite

Operating Systems:

• Windows NT 4

• Windows 98

• Red Hat Linux 5.1 

300A and BH6 goodness

The Core System Components

• Intel Celeron 300A CPU
• Abit BH6 motherboard (Intel 440BX chipset)
• 256 MB PC100 SDRAM

Intel Celeron 300A:

I’ll start by saying a few words about what is probably my favorite component of the new system. Of course, any PC would be lousy without a decent CPU, but the Celeron 300A is really something special. Until the 300A came along, I was pretty much set on getting a PII-333 and overclocking it to 350 or, if possible, 400MHz. Since the 350 and 400 PIIs were terribly expensive, and since the 300MHz PIIs were made with the older, .35u fabrication process, the PII-333 looked to be the sweet spot for the moment. I knew, however, that my slick, new PC would have to run a notch or two behind the very latest 450MHz PII machines out there. Not a big deal, but it stole some of the luster, nevertheless.

Then Tom over at Tom’s Hardware Guide released his preview of the Celeron 300A CPU, and everything changed. I’d had my eye on Intel’s upcoming Mendocino core for a while, and Tom’s benchmarks confirmed my suspicions: for many applications, the new Celeron CPUs matched or beat the PII at the same clock rate.

The beauty of the Mendocino core is its 128K of integrated level-2 cache. Previous Celeron CPUs had no L2 cache, and the standard PII line has 512KB of L2 cache, but that cache resides on the PII’s circuit board and runs at half the PII’s clock speed (i.e., a PII at 300MHz has a 150MHz L2 cache). The Mendocino core—on which the Celeron 300A is based—has its L2 cache on-chip, running at full clock speed (i.e., a Celeron 300A at 300MHz has a 300MHz L2 cache). Not even the elegant Pentium Pro can match the clean simplicity of the 300A’s cache design; the Pro’s "dual-cavity" design nestled two separate pieces of silicon together.

Some folks out there on the ‘net seem to be giving/getting (it’s a nasty cycle) the impression the Celeron 300A is a better CPU for 3D gaming but the PII, with its 512K cache, is a better CPU for general purpose/business applications. I can see why folks said that sort of thing about the older Celerons with no L2 cache, but for the 300A, the benchmarks just don’t support that assertion. The performance race between the traditional PII and the Celeron 300A (at the same clock speed) comes down to which works best for a given application: a bigger, slower L2 cache, or a smaller, faster one. In many cases, the 128K Celeron bests the PII, and in very, very few cases does the 128K Celeron seem to lag behind the PII by any substantial margin. Especially when placed on a 100MHz bus, where the penalty for an L2 cache miss is less pronounced, the 128K Celeron shines.

The Mendocino core also inherits a nifty trait from its Celeronian forebears: by shedding the sensitive off-chip L2 cache of the PII, the Mendocino core winds up to astronomical clock speeds with little hint of instability. My own 300A runs at 450MHz without even a slight bump up in its default voltage setting; through several weeks at 2.0V and 450MHz I have yet to experience a suspect system crash. (Kids: don’t try this at home with Win95/98—it just crashes at random. I’m primarily running NT4.) Not every 300A will succeed equally at running 50% above its rated speed, but given a nice, well-attached heat sink and a well-cooled case, I’ll bet over 90% of ‘em will.

Others on the ‘net have made quite bit of noise about the SL2W8 PIIs. These puppies are essentially re-marked PII-450s selling as PII-300s. Apparently, Intel’s desire to maximize its profits all the way up and down the supply/demand curves has created an overclocker’s playground. Unlike older 300MHz PIIs, the SL2W8s are manufactured with .25u process technology, and they have faster cache chips like the PII-450. Andy over at BXBoards took a survey that turned up 100% success running SL2W8s at 450MHz.  If you’re uncomfortable with the possibility of failure overclocking a Celeron 300A—and if you’re willing to pay a bit more and hunt around some for a particular PII revision—the SL2W8 PIIs might be worth a look. The SL2W8 might even be easier to run at 504MHz, if you fancy funky bus speeds.  Just don’t tell me the SL2W8 is any faster at 450MHz than my 300A. Ahem.

Anyhow, I am one of the many fortunate ones. What I paid: about $169. What I got: arguably the fastest x86 CPU design for single-processor configurations available today.

The mother of all boards

All of this overclocking goodness wouldn’t be possible without a good motherboard, and the Abit BH6 is the cream of the crop—especially for overclocking. I built my previous system on an Abit IT5H motherboard, and it has always been fast and extremely stable.

Plus, it got me hooked on Abit’s SoftMenu BIOS. SoftMenu lets you set system bus speeds, multipliers, CPU voltages, etc. without opening the PC case and moving jumpers around. Obviously intended for folks who want to tweak, overclock, and otherwise abuse their PCs, SoftMenu is a great tool as well as a signal from Abit: "We understand." And understand they do. Abit’s BX chipset-based boards amplify that message, adding the ability to tweak CPU voltage settings in 0.05v increments. These fine, incremental steps in voltage settings make overclocking easier and even, when used properly, safer. Higher voltage may make a reluctant CPU sit up and run at a higher speed, but excessive voltage is the number-one cause of death in overclocked CPUs. Why risk taking the CPU voltage up 0.1 or 0.2v at a time if a little 0.05v bump will do?

With the BH6, Abit improved on its first BX board, the BX6, by losing a DIMM slot and the pricey data buffers that were made necessary by its presence. The BH6’s 3 DIMM slots are plenty enough for most of us, anyhow. Abit also gave the BH6 a better expansion slot selection: 1 AGP slot, 5 tasty PCI slots, and only 2 stuffy ISA slots (you’ve gotta put your modem somewhere, I guess). The BH6 also comes equipped with a singularly evil trick: the SEL 100/66# SoftMenu setting. Via this setting, you can trick most PII-350 and 400s into believing they are sitting on a 66MHz bus—even if the bus is really running at 100MHz. Because these CPUs are multiplier locked at 100MHz bus speeds but not at 66MHz, this evil bit of Abit magic "unlocks" ‘em, so they can run and play at whatever multiplier suits your fancy.

Once your CPU can run free—or even if it can’t entirely—the BH6 offers an array of bus speeds to help it along: 100, 103, 112, 124, and 133MHz. (Uhm, I may have missed one, but you get the idea.) Heck, 124MHz is a useful, intermediate setting unique to the BH6. Also, the BH6 is kind enough to divide the 133MHz bus setting by 4 when determining PCI bus timing. This practice yields a wholly kosher 33.3MHz PCI clock instead of an ugly 44.4MHz when the system bus speed is set to 133MHz.

Any motherboard simultaneously this wholesome and this devious undeniably belongs in the DamageBox. And it ships with Celeron 300A support built-in. How could I resist?

DamageBox storage

Storage:

Asus 40X UDMA CD-ROM Drive

Most folks look for speed or features in a CD-ROM drive–the latest and greatest "X" factor or some other nifty feature.   I don't.  In fact, I'm almost ashamed to own of one of the faster CD-ROM drives currently out there–the big 40X.  What do I want in a CD-ROM drive? For me, CD drives are kinda like kids: the best ones are the ones that don't annoy me.  And the faster and newer they are, the more annoying they seem to be.

Having gone through more than my share of CD-ROM drives–5 warranty replacements from Gateway 2000, among others–I'm pretty well acquainted with the ways a CD-ROM drive can annoy the heck outta me. There must be amazing price pressures on CD-ROM drive manufacturers, because there are utter boatloads of junky CD drives out there. These drives exhibit a long, varied list of fatal or near-fatal flaws. Among them: 

• Excruciatingly slow spin-up times and inadequate buffering, making opening Explorer on my breakneck-speed PC take longer than launching a game of Unreal from the disk cache.  (Yeah, the DamageBox can cache Unreal.  Heh.)
• High CPU utilization, even when simply playing music from an audio CD, sometimes to the point of bringing the entire system to its knees for seconds at a time.
• The ability to make 44KHz digital stereo audio sound like AM radio with patented StaticStorm technology (TM, Reserved, 1996, Acer Technology Inc.)
• Utter failure at digital audio extraction, again bringing the system to a standstill.
• Instability on the IDE bus, often crashing the PC, usually combined with a nasty fussiness over being made to share an IDE channel.  And forget about running a non-standard bus speed.
• Feeble drive logic incapable of reading CD-R/RW media, PhotoCDs, or anythingelse that isn't designed to give me 10 free hours on AOL.
• The complete lack of any sort of Direct Memory Access capability; nothing but bad old-fashioned IDE.
• Lousy mechanicals that make spinning up a disc sound like a B-52 taking off, often paired with wobbly-sounding full-speed vibra-fests. 

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