best cheap/free scores 1.1

[Dan81]

I've been dormant for quite some time here... but nuff'. I'm back.

Mobos:
- ECS P6STP-FL + VIA C3 Ezra
- ASUS P5P800 + Pentium 4 631
- QDI KinetiZ 7B + Duron 1000
- FIC P4M-RS350 + Celeron D 331 - Medion OEM
- ASUS M4N68T-M + Athlon II X2 250 - one of the few solid Geforce 7025 mobos I own, besides Gigabyte's M68MT-S2P Rev3.1
- ASRock 775i65PE + Pentium D 925 - a bit of wasted potential due to 865PE max RAM limit being 3.5GB.
- EpoX EP-8HDA5I + Athlon 64 3000 s754
- Fujitsu Siemens D1107 system board
- ASRock P4i65G + Prescott HT 3GHz
- MSI GF6150-P33 + Sempron 145 (the "why does this even exist" combo... Geforce 6150 should tell you enough.)
- Intel DH61CR + i5 2300
- Shuttle (ECS OEM) MK40V + Athlon XP 2200+ - this is proof Shuttle could fix up ECS and PCChips' screwups, and that's saying something.
- Lenovo G41 mobo + E5700
- 2x ABIT VP6 - only one works... the other won't even beep. The one that works needs a full recap, of course. A nice surprise during the POST sequence, which is apparently present on both BIOS chips
- Micronics MC10513653 w/ Intel 486 DX4 100MHz - as much as I love seeing this board... the BIOS on it is horribly spartan - to the point I was unable to get a Quantum Fireball 635AT from a Compaq (judging by the "Replace with Compaq spare sticker) running, because it would NOT let me input the HDD settings manually. An upside is that it uses a RTC module and not some yucky Varta BS battery. I'll try and test the other cards separately on my Aquaris 4D50NR, to see how far am I going to get with it

With this, we move on to GPUs:

- Radeon 9600 Pro - quite the bunch of those, with one having a cooler that would better suit a R300/R350 card at the very least, than a 9600.
- GTX 275 - dead, unfortunately. Does not complete POST but does get detected.
- Radeon X1950XTX - the only way I got this thing to work without artefacting was LITERALLY sticking a copper penny inbetween the GPU core and the heatsink. The most ghetto solution one can possibly think - especially since it passed Furmark and several 3dMark versions (2001, 2003 and 2005) without breaking a sweat.
- Radeon R7 370 4GB - roachfest... has had a few missing SMDs I've soldered back. Untested as of this post.
- Palit DAYTONA Geforce 4 MX440 64MB - golden PCB, Winbond RAM
- Radeon Mobility 9700 - disguised as a 9600 Pro AGP.
- Radeon 9250s - quite a lot of 'em too
- S3 Savage 4 AGP - Diamond Multimedia OEM

Finally, one of the other prized finds, a Xenon revision Xbox 360, complete in box, with old Blades dashboard from 2008 - 2.0.6717.

[TechGeek]

The Micronics board that I've got also has a seriously barebones BIOS. And if yours is anything like mine, it has completely nonfunctional extended/translated CHS routines, and you'll have to use an add-in boot ROM (say, installed on a network card) that patches in its own Int13h routines that actually have working translated CHS routines.

[Topcat]

I've been dormant for quite some time here... but nuff'. I'm back.


- 2x ABIT VP6 - only one works... the other won't even beep. The one that works needs a full recap, of course. A nice surprise during the POST sequence, which is apparently present on both BIOS chips
- Micronics MC10513653 w/ Intel 486 DX4 100MHz - as much as I love seeing this board... the BIOS on it is horribly spartan - to the point I was unable to get a Quantum Fireball 635AT from a Compaq (judging by the "Replace with Compaq spare sticker) running, because it would NOT let me input the HDD settings manually. An upside is that it uses a RTC module and not some yucky Varta BS battery. I'll try and test the other cards separately on my Aquaris 4D50NR, to see how far am I going to get with it

Enjoy! Glad they finally got there!

[ChaosLegionnaire]

I've been dormant for quite some time here... but nuff'. I'm back.

Mobos:
- ASUS P5P800 + Pentium 4 631
- ASRock 775i65PE + Pentium D 925 - a bit of wasted potential due to 865PE max RAM limit being 3.5GB.
- ASRock P4i65G + Prescott HT 3GHz

damn how do u always get the good stuff?! really nice p4 stuff u got there!

- Radeon 9600 Pro - quite the bunch of those, with one having a cooler that would better suit a R300/R350 card at the very least, than a 9600.

what cooler was that? might be a custom third party cooler? or was it the stock cooler? the radeon 9600 series ran pretty cool so the stock heatsink works fine for it. cant say the same for the radeon 9700/9800 cards. pretty surprised the entire 9500/9600/9700/9800 line used more or less the same type of single slot cooler...

- Radeon X1950XTX - the only way I got this thing to work without artefacting was LITERALLY sticking a copper penny inbetween the GPU core and the heatsink. The most ghetto solution one can possibly think - especially since it passed Furmark and several 3dMark versions (2001, 2003 and 2005) without breaking a sweat.

ah~ the classic "shim higher than the die" problem on many ati gpus strikes again... why ati keeps doing this is pretty mind boggling. their high end gpus that had this shim installed on the substrate all had pretty large dies. therefore, its unlikely the die would crack. this more like smells of planned obsolescence to me...

but other than that, its a great gpu! its the top end gpu of the x1000 series. should have no problems running all games of that era in full hd res or uxga res if u're still stuck on a 4:3 monitor. should treat it well by replacing the stock heatsink with a better one to make it last!

- Radeon Mobility 9700 - disguised as a 9600 Pro AGP.

yea haha! that fooled a number of people all right who didnt do their research before buying. the mobile product naming scheme is not the same as the desktop product naming scheme, so the mobility radeon 9700 used the rv360 gpu found on the desktop radeon 9600 xt. the mobility radeon 9800 used a heavily downclocked and half-crippled r420 gpu used on the desktop radeon x800 series.

- Radeon 9250s - quite a lot of 'em too

yea im sure momaka would love to have a pick at all those 9250 cards as it was his first video card many years ago when he was a lad.

[Dan81]

IIRC the HUEG cooler that was on one of the 9600 Pro cards (a Club3D/Powercolor OEM'd one) is a Evercool Turbo II, which is sort of a clone to the Revoltec VGA Graphic Freezer. I already stuck that huge mofo over a R300 based Medion 9600TX (which is just a souped up 9500 Pro that prolly can be unlocked into a 9700 Pro if I'm lucky?) that had a rather dinky cooler.

As far as the Mobility 9700 goes - that thing can likely run at 9600XT so I'll probably mod it as such. It uses Hynix RAM which feels like quality to me.

And for the "crown jewel"... a 9800SE AIW that required a reflow on the RAM chips. It surprised me since I used to remember the failure point of those cards being... the shim over the GPU itself. It surprised me to find out the RAM chips were at fault with this one - methinks either it had a pretty nasty shock that caused solder balls to go awry... or the amount they heat up to was what caused the artefacts. It works absolutely fine after I did the reflow (I have zero access to anyone with a reball solution, aside from the expensive pricks that claim "it's not worth it".) though I'm uncertain whether to run it as it is or just go ahead and add some RAM heatsinks. It's been repasted with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut for that matter so I won't have any remorses in using less-than-ideal thermal solutions. Worked well on my Soltek SL-75FRN2-RL "Golden Flame" + Athlon XP-M 2600+ (yes, I run a mobile Barton in there lol) and I think it even passed 3DMark01 with no issues - didn't push it too far w/ 03 out of fear of not breaking it worse than it was.

btw, the stock heatsink on that X1950XTX does a pretty good job at keeping it cool - I have yet to see any other cooler that can fit that card which would keep up w/ it.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

IIRC the HUEG cooler that was on one of the 9600 Pro cards (a Club3D/Powercolor OEM'd one) is a Evercool Turbo II, which is sort of a clone to the Revoltec VGA Graphic Freezer.

ah thanks. its looks like a zalman vf950 but with bigger and longer heatsink fins but not as many heatpipes and half the number of heatpipes as on the zalman vf1000. should cool gpus decently at around 75w tdp.

It uses Hynix RAM which feels like quality to me.

yea korean vram from hynix and samsung are considered top tier or tier one vram. samsung vram tends to have more consistent asic quality and binning in their chips but unfortunately, "consistent" also means not very overclockable or overclocking doesnt seem to scale with temperature, so i typically run samsung vram chips bare and dont bother putting ramsinks on them.

hynix on the other hand tend to have more variance in their asic quality so depending on your luck, u may get bum vram chips that dont oc well or u'll get good asic quality chips that overclock well and can also scale with temperature if u put copper ramsinks on them.

And for the "crown jewel"... a 9800SE AIW that required a reflow on the RAM chips. It surprised me since I used to remember the failure point of those cards being... the shim over the GPU itself. It surprised me to find out the RAM chips were at fault with this one

how u managed to figure out it was the ram chips is beyond me?! i too would have given it up if the gpu refused to work no matter how much i reflowed it. lol... what brand of ram chips is on there anyway? i know they typically use samsung or hynix vram but sometimes they used infineon on the lower end cards like on the 9500 series, 9700 non-pro and 9800se or some no-name generic brand of video mem on there.

I'm uncertain whether to run it as it is or just go ahead and add some RAM heatsinks. It's been repasted with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut for that matter so I won't have any remorses in using less-than-ideal thermal solutions.

try the arctic vga silencer rev 2 or 3 if u have one. thats about the only third party cooler i've heard of that will fit and work on the aiw 9700/9800 cards.

[Dan81]

Samsung K4D263238E-GC2A RAM on the 9800SE AIW. I figured it's RAM since pressing the GPU had no effect, but pressing the RAM chips would change the artefacts.

As for cooling, I meant the RAM chips. The GPU heatsink will have to stay as it is... most I've tried (including the Evercool Turbo II) interfere with the TV tuner.

[Topcat]

More 'trash'....guy dismantled a mining setup and here's all the hardware...

This box contains a motherboard with a Ryzen 5 1600. 1x 1070ti, 2x RX580 armor, 4x RX 5700 XT GPU's, and 2x unknown power supplies.



Box of cabling, 5x 120mm 120v AC fans....and another motherboard...



The second motherboard. Has a 9th gen I7 @ 3.7GHz (forgot the number) and 16gb RAM





Everything I've checked so far has been good.

[Dan81]

Welp, pretty sad news for the fully recapped VP6. Might likely be a dead chipset - bought a POST card off a regular client of mine - no codes, just 4 dashes. The working board (which is currently missing its 2nd CPU socket) does go thru codes properly.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

4 dashes can also just mean a problem starting or initialising the cpu or no cpu inserted. i have mobos with a bad cpu vrm section that dont output the right voltage required for the cpu thus the cpu doesnt start so the mobo just thinks i didnt insert a cpu and displays 4 dashes on the post card. check the cpu vrm section is outputting the right voltage and try to fix/replace the mosfets and/or the vrm controller ic. whats the issue that makes u think that it is the chipset that is focked instead?

[Dan81]

I used the same SL52R CPUs that work on my 694D Pro-AR. All dashes. FETs output the proper voltages as I have a working VP6 that I compared voltages from.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

ok then. have u tried reflowing the chipset yet? still no worky after reflow? sad to see a board like that go into the computer graveyard...

[Dan81]

That's one thing I haven't tried but pretty sure it won't work. I tried pressing down on the chipset and no change.

[Topcat]

Welp, pretty sad news for the fully recapped VP6. Might likely be a dead chipset - bought a POST card off a regular client of mine - no codes, just 4 dashes. The working board (which is currently missing its 2nd CPU socket) does go thru codes properly.

That's a bummer. The other one wasn't missing the socket, just the tab that holds the heatsink on. I knew there was something with that board, but for the life of me couldn't remember what it was at the time I sent it. Its been stored in the closet for quite a few years.

[Dan81]

I removed the 2nd socket entirely since I could not replace the plastics at all. I'll have to solder a new one in there, and I suppose the recapped one will serve as socket donor.

[Topcat]

I removed the 2nd socket entirely since I could not replace the plastics at all. I'll have to solder a new one in there, and I suppose the recapped one will serve as socket donor.

Is there not some new-old-stock S370's out there? That would be a difficult soldering job as it is, especially having to reuse & clean the pins off a used socket.

[Dan81]

As far as Ali goes, none. Just some random SBCs, a CUV4X-D that's priced at as much as a limited edition OGXbox (read - high af) and heatsinks, but no skt370s w/ pins available.

An idea would have been removing the other socket as well and soldering 2x Lin-Lin adapters, but aside from the amount of pins, I'm not sure whether that would work out of the box.

[Dan81]

Scored these last Sunday. Did I mention I love the local car boot sale?

1. A whole Baby AT build consisting of:
- LuckyStar 6BX2 r1.0
- P2 350MHz
- 32MB RAM
- Intel 740 AGP (my first i740 AGP card, yey!)
- S3 Sonic Vibes PCI soundcard (now this gotta be rare )
- BTC 40x CDROM
- JNC case that looked pretty sturdy and had an JNC PSU as well (y'all remember the gutless 200C units, don't ya?) - sold to a regular client, not before installing a Linkworld AT PSU (that looked slightly better than the JNC, but had the fan installed the wrong way, sasuga Stinkworld )
- WD Caviar AC26400 that somehow survived the whole ordeal.

Recapped the CPU VRM with caps from one of the VP6s from Topcat - unfortunately it was a dead end for the recapped mobo - the chipset has some form of internal short, as POST card shows nothing (just 4 dashes) no matter the CPU used.

2. ABIT NF7-S - fixed it fairly easy - bad 1800uF 6.3v Nichicon HM preventing POST, and some dumb schmuck left the CMOS jumper to clear . Oh, and the BIOS had to be externally reflashed as the original somehow corrupted itself. Perfect timing to get in the legendary "D27 Taipan" BIOS that allows for mad overclocking on a mobile Athlon XP, and I get some good enhancement on the Sillicon Image 3112 SATA/RAID controller with that BIOS. Slapped a pair of blue sinked GeiL sticks, a mobile AXP 2400, everything runs great. Photos below show the board, alongside its other sibling, the standard NF7 without RAID.



3. 2x PS3 slims - CECH2003B and CECH2504B. Both work, both needed TLC and the 2003B needs a shell transplant. 2504B came with a free Sixaxis (same as Dualshock but no rumbles)

4. Gigabyte GA-PA65-UD3-B3 - the only board left untested from the bunch as I don't have any 1155 CPUs handy...

5. HP/Seagate 300GB SAS 10K - haven't tested further than the LSI Logic BIOS from my controller, but no funky sounds were happening. Just sweet 10k purring.

6. Seagate Barracuda ST31000528AS - needs a SMART reset as it bogus reports 28% health despite the drive being fine.

7. Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro AGP 512MB - works fine, no weird juju on screen. Tested w/ FX4300 and 8GB DDR3.

Looking forward this upcoming weekend for more sweet scores.

[dmill89]

Here's a real "blast from the past", an Alienware Aurora M9700 (in the "Conspiracy Blue" color).

Specs:
CPU: AMD Turion 64 ML-34
RAM: 1GB DDR
GPU: Nvidia GeForce Go 9700 GS
SSD: MSI Spatium S270 240GB (not original)
HDD: Toshiba 500GB 7200 RPM (not original)
ODD: DVD-RW
Screen: 17" 1440X900 (Samsung LTN170X2-L02)
OS: Windows XP Media Center Edition (originally had a Vista Home Premium COA, but I found an image for XP MCE restore discs for this system which is a much better match for the hardware)

[Topcat]

Nice score, especially to be in such good condition.