abit kd7a/2500+ beginner questions

[tony]

grandma & i just fastened together our new fry's electronics system that was
too simple and works great. we "joined" the abit group, but were thinking
they think our questions are stupid:
1. we use a coolermaster copper core cpu fan with rheostat. cpu fan speed is
3629 currently and cu temp is 44c. shutdown is set at 56c. we would like to
dial down the fan speed even more in interest of noise. we have two addl
case fans. is dialing down the fan and raising the cpu temp to say, 50c, ok?
2. we have one stick of retail new kingston 2100 512. can you mix different
mhz? sticks; eg, 512 of 2700 in the other slot?(we know we could have
purchased faster ram, but we did not intend to buy this faster athlon and
board, but were glad we did. the install was just too simple)
3.we have win 98 se full version installed. we were told that it would be
better if we formatted (again) our 60 gb wd hard drive, and installed win xp
full home version.
we use our pc mainly for word and photos (minolta s414) and general home
stuff.
thankyou. tony & karen, oregon

 

[Sooky Grumper]

grandma & i just fastened together our new fry's electronics system that was
too simple and works great. we "joined" the abit group, but were thinking
they think our questions are stupid:
1. we use a coolermaster copper core cpu fan with rheostat. cpu fan speed is
3629 currently and cu temp is 44c. shutdown is set at 56c. we would like to
dial down the fan speed even more in interest of noise. we have two addl
case fans. is dialing down the fan and raising the cpu temp to say, 50c, ok?

That's fine. It'll run fine at 60C, too.

2. we have one stick of retail new kingston 2100 512. can you mix different
mhz? sticks; eg, 512 of 2700 in the other slot?(we know we could have
purchased faster ram, but we did not intend to buy this faster athlon and
board, but were glad we did. the install was just too simple)

Should be that they both just run at the speed of the slowest stick.

3.we have win 98 se full version installed. we were told that it would be
better if we formatted (again) our 60 gb wd hard drive, and installed win xp
full home version.

Is this a question? You can always reformat and repartition (AFTER
MAKING BACKUPS OF YOUR PERSONAL FILES INCLUDING EMAIL AND FAVORITES) and
make the system a dual boot win98se and winxp. I have this configuration
for some software that I have that doesn't play nice with XP, and also
for some legacy hardware that is unsupported under XP. Having a windows
98se partition also makes it easier to answer emails from relatives and
friends asking for help, as many of them still us win98. Otherwise, I
boot to XP.