I like others on here am a serial eBay trawler.
Pickings for cheap auctions are slimmer than ever but there are still things of interest out there, some valuable some just interesting.
I saw a listing for a bunch of computers, pretty poorly written up. I have rotated the pictures, they were all sideways previously!
A Dell Dimension, one of the deeply uninteresting ones with no AGP socket
A old HP P4/CeleronD, again pretty uninteresting.
And a A64 home build. This actually looked interesting as it was a fairly rare DPS (dual power system) A64 board with a 7800 card by the looks of it.
Then towards the end of the list of images (past the 5 preview ones) there was a few of these.
OK that's interesting....
Yep that's fizzy willy time
2011 socket X79 system.
Holding my horses a little, its clearly been wet and is listed as specifically not even powering on.
Hmmm should I see if he will take a offer..
I offer reasonably, certainly not peanuts, allot more than some would have offered I bet!
Man maths kicks in and I figure even if it has the poverty i7 3820 in it I will scrape some cash back if the rest is dead.
So I drive the 50 miles to pick them up and then bring them back. Seller said they were being sold on someone else behalf, they all came out of a shed that was coming down!
So got the haul back home and sat the interesting one down on the table.
Smelled bad.
Cats.
Specifically cat pish.
I am sure we have all been there.
Oh well time to crack on.
Tried to power it on and it was stone dead
So I remove the cards one by one and things do not look promising!
Initially it just looks like mud but this stuff is horrid, its a mix of cat pish, cat hair, grease and grime. It is stuck fast and will not brush off!
Only one thing for it.
Bath time!
Good scrub with a paint brush then off to the oven @ 130 for a hour.
While that's cooking next up is the graphics cards!
2 x 580GTX
Covered in cat smeg.
X-fi Titanium, yet more smeg!
And a RM1050. Absolutely full of smeg had to void the warranty label on this!
Soooo
All that done and I am down a tub of alcohol wipes.
Board is toasty and dry now so clean the heatsinks and replace the thermal pad for the VRMs.
Next onto the case!
Thought about sticking it in the dishwasher but as it was full of cat hair and cat whizz thought might not as the Mrs would prob make me replace it if she found out.
Oh and the H100 needed a clean ( did this later)
So while that was all drying lets see if any of this stuff works, all reasonably clean but not tested a single part of it! This has taken me most of a weekend to get to this stage!
So I set up a test system, hadnt given the H100 a proper clean at this point and had to use it as I don't have any other 2011 coolers.
No dice first few power ons, does power on though, more than it did when it was encrusted in felix the cats pish.
Moved the memory about...
OK lets try again.
boom!
Much fist pumping! GF thinks I am very sad and doesn't seem to respond with the desired enthusiasm I think the situation deserves lol
Next few hours are spent installing windows and playing with it, managed to get 4 sticks of mem in quad channel and all working spot on.
Well except the onboard realtek audio which has the refusal to detect jacks fault
Only other part that didn't want to work was the fan controller on the H100 (maybe why the whole machine was consigned to a leaky shed?).
So I rebuilt with a new cooler.
Very happy, and I then recapped and cleaned out the A64 rig which now works perfectly also.
Where there is muck there's brass in the pc world!
Also shows how some folk are absolutely mad, this machine would have cost $$$$$$$ in 2011 when it was new, who bins it off in a old wet shed!
Pickings for cheap auctions are slimmer than ever but there are still things of interest out there, some valuable some just interesting.
I saw a listing for a bunch of computers, pretty poorly written up. I have rotated the pictures, they were all sideways previously!
A Dell Dimension, one of the deeply uninteresting ones with no AGP socket
A old HP P4/CeleronD, again pretty uninteresting.
And a A64 home build. This actually looked interesting as it was a fairly rare DPS (dual power system) A64 board with a 7800 card by the looks of it.
Then towards the end of the list of images (past the 5 preview ones) there was a few of these.
OK that's interesting....
Yep that's fizzy willy time
2011 socket X79 system.Holding my horses a little, its clearly been wet and is listed as specifically not even powering on.
Hmmm should I see if he will take a offer..
I offer reasonably, certainly not peanuts, allot more than some would have offered I bet!
Man maths kicks in and I figure even if it has the poverty i7 3820 in it I will scrape some cash back if the rest is dead.
So I drive the 50 miles to pick them up and then bring them back. Seller said they were being sold on someone else behalf, they all came out of a shed that was coming down!
So got the haul back home and sat the interesting one down on the table.
Smelled bad.
Cats.
Specifically cat pish.
I am sure we have all been there.
Oh well time to crack on.
Tried to power it on and it was stone dead
So I remove the cards one by one and things do not look promising!
Initially it just looks like mud but this stuff is horrid, its a mix of cat pish, cat hair, grease and grime. It is stuck fast and will not brush off!
Only one thing for it.
Bath time!
Good scrub with a paint brush then off to the oven @ 130 for a hour.
While that's cooking next up is the graphics cards!
2 x 580GTX
Covered in cat smeg.
X-fi Titanium, yet more smeg!
And a RM1050. Absolutely full of smeg had to void the warranty label on this!
Soooo
All that done and I am down a tub of alcohol wipes.
Board is toasty and dry now so clean the heatsinks and replace the thermal pad for the VRMs.
Next onto the case!
Thought about sticking it in the dishwasher but as it was full of cat hair and cat whizz thought might not as the Mrs would prob make me replace it if she found out.
Oh and the H100 needed a clean ( did this later)
So while that was all drying lets see if any of this stuff works, all reasonably clean but not tested a single part of it! This has taken me most of a weekend to get to this stage!
So I set up a test system, hadnt given the H100 a proper clean at this point and had to use it as I don't have any other 2011 coolers.
No dice first few power ons, does power on though, more than it did when it was encrusted in felix the cats pish.
Moved the memory about...
OK lets try again.
boom!
Much fist pumping! GF thinks I am very sad and doesn't seem to respond with the desired enthusiasm I think the situation deserves lol
Next few hours are spent installing windows and playing with it, managed to get 4 sticks of mem in quad channel and all working spot on.
Well except the onboard realtek audio which has the refusal to detect jacks fault
Only other part that didn't want to work was the fan controller on the H100 (maybe why the whole machine was consigned to a leaky shed?).
So I rebuilt with a new cooler.
Very happy, and I then recapped and cleaned out the A64 rig which now works perfectly also.
Where there is muck there's brass in the pc world!
Also shows how some folk are absolutely mad, this machine would have cost $$$$$$$ in 2011 when it was new, who bins it off in a old wet shed!
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