# CPU + Mobo + RAM Upgrade Questions

## BobArctor

I'm in the process of searching through the forum for help with this, but I thought I'd also put out a general call for help...

Came home last weekend to discover my Gentoo PC had died. Replaced the PSU and still received no POST. Checked all cabling, same result. No beeps. Disconnected all drives and RAM, still no POST. Reset the BIOS, still no POST. I concluded that when the PSU died, it took the motherboard and/or CPU with it, so I've purchased upgrades that are arriving in the next day or so.

OLD: 1st generation P4 2.66, Asus P4P800SE, 1GB DDR400 RAM

NEW: Intel Pentium E5200 Wolfdale 2.5GHz Dual-Core Processor, ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2 VIA PT880 Pro/PT880, 2GB DDR2-667

Keeping old HDDs, video card, optical drive.

So far, I've read that I will need to use a SMP kernel to use both cores, but I'm unsure if that's an option in the kernel config or a different source package or something else. I will have to alter my current kernel config to de-select options for the old CPU's hyperthreading. I also understand I will need to make changes in make.conf cflags.

What are the steps I need to take to make this as pain-free as possible? Boot as normal (if possible), make _exactly_ what changes to make.conf, then emerge -aev @system @world? Or boot from CD and... do what?

It's been a long time (2006.0) since I installed Gentoo and while I've been dedicated about keeping it up-to-date, I still have to look up even (relatively) simple things because it seems I can never remember every. last. detail. (For example, GCC. I know I'd masked ~x86 upgrades to that, but since I can't 'equery list gcc' right now, I couldn't tell you which version I'm running...)

Any help or pointers to relevant threads, wiki pages, etc. would be great.

Thanks.

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## snIP3r

hi!

ok, first of all: now you have a 64bit cpu so you can change to 64bit os. this requires to change the cflags AND chost of your system. heres a guide to do the chost change:

```

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/change-chost.xml

```

but read the warning! this change may screw up your system so it could be necessary to reinstall the whole system!

... and the cflags settings:

```

http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Safe_Cflags/Intel

```

if you want to enable smp support you can do this by activating this setting in your kernel config:

```

Processor type and features  --->

  [*] Symmetric multi-processing support

```

you now can also enable speedstep to save power. this requires enabling speedstep in bios and the kernel config. heres a guide how to:

```

http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/CPU_Frequency_Scaling

```

_personally_ i would suggest to completely reinstall the system. this requires more effort but you then have a new _clean_ system.

just my 2cents...

snIP3r

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## slackline

I'm looking to build a replacement system in the near future and thought about migrating my current install, but have decided that would be a rather large pain and may not work, so my current thinking is that I'll do a fresh install, setting the ARCH etc. as required, and once a base install is up and running copy over my old /var/lib/portage/world, emerge -uDN @world and then copy over all the directories from the old ~/*

Perhaps this might be an easier approach (if its a sane one to take!).

slack

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## pelelademadera

fresh install...

copy /etc/portage/package.* /etc/make.conf and any configuration file you need, your home partition and thats it.

a clean install on my E2180 @ 3150Ghz 2gb ram and a P35 its about 2 hours (bootstrap+emerge -e system)

kde4 + amarok + ffox +kdm takes 2 hours. so your time will be similar

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## slackline

 *pelelademadera wrote:*   

> fresh install...
> 
> copy /etc/portage/package.* /etc/make.conf and any configuration file you need, your home partition and thats it.
> 
> a clean install on my E2180 @ 3150Ghz 2gb ram and a P35 its about 2 hours (bootstrap+emerge -e system)
> ...

 

Ah yes, /etc/portage/package.* are some rather key files, but I'm not so sure copying /etc/make.conf straight over is such a good idea unless you make sure that the 'ARCH' entry is correctly adjusted to the new system (if the two differ that is!).

slack

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## bobspencer123

I did a similar update recently from an old amd3700+ to a phenom and  here  is my post and how I did it. Was pretty simple since I decided to not go from x86 to amd64.

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## slackline

 *bobspencer123 wrote:*   

> I did a similar update recently from an old amd3700+ to a phenom and  here  is my post and how I did it. Was pretty simple since I decided to not go from x86 to amd64.

 

Nice, cheers for that, switching from ~x86 to amd64 (or more likely ~amd64) is the difference I'd have thought.

Thanks again for the pointer,

slack

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