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Evil Lurker's poverty rig... v2.0

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    Evil Lurker's poverty rig... v2.0

    Well I finally decided to break down and take some pics of my latest poverty rig.



    The CPU is still running a tad bit warm for my tastes even after installing the 120mm fan on the side panel. I tried hooking it up to the motherboard's 3 pin power connector but the BIOS has the PWM output set so low that the fan won't even spin up. Its amazing that the scythe fans still even work, had them since like circa 1999ish with god knows how many thousands of hours on them... nothing like good old fluid dynamic bearings. Since there was essentially no other viable way to power the fan I just decided to hack a couple of the crimp connectors off and use a spare wall wart with a bit of terminal block foam taped to the side to make the connections. My DMM reads 11.65v... a bit high perhaps for a 210ma unregulated 9v rated PSU.

    Now with the fan running it takes about ~25-30 mins of Prime95 before my CPU temps top out around 67-68C... quite a bit of improvement over the ~5 minutes to reach that temp before. I still think its running pretty darn hot for what it is. Going to attempt application of Artic Silver and see if that helps my core temps go down any. AFAIK the heatsink has never been removed but who knows. Would be a great time to use some scrubbing bubbles on it and get it nice and clean.

    I think Friday is going to be full tear down day... gonna finish cutting another air hole up around the graphics card and try to BSEL mod the CPU.

    #2
    Re: Evil Lurker's poverty rig... v2.0

    Looks good. I would clean the HS though, its probably clogged with dust.

    I also wouldn't call this a poverty rig... one of those would be a dying celeron unit that is 10+ years old and riddled with bad caps and severely yellowed due to having an ashtray in the front. It would run an old version of bootleg XP with no AV and enough malware to give the best of us a bad day at the least. (I've seen these before, they do exist )

    What you have is a ModBox... Extremely modded, yes, but clever and showing of the owner's skill (in a good way). Be proud that you know how to actually do this, as it will both turn heads and save you money down the road.
    Last edited by ratdude747; 06-24-2012, 10:23 PM.
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      #3
      Re: Evil Lurker's poverty rig... v2.0

      Dust? look at the pic. there's barely a spec of dust in sight.
      I love putting bad caps and flat batteries in fire and watching them explode!!

      No wonder it doesn't work! You installed the jumper wires backwards

      Main PC: Core i7 3770K 3.5GHz, Gigabyte GA-Z77M-D3H-MVP, 8GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600, 240GB Intel 335 Series SSD, 750GB WD HDD, Sony Optiarc DVD RW, Palit nVidia GTX660 Ti, CoolerMaster N200 Case, Delta DPS-600MB 600W PSU, Hauppauge TV Tuner, Windows 7 Home Premium

      Office PC: HP ProLiant ML150 G3, 2x Xeon E5335 2GHz, 4GB DDR2 RAM, 120GB Intel 530 SSD, 2x 250GB HDD, 2x 450GB 15K SAS HDD in RAID 1, 1x 2TB HDD, nVidia 8400GS, Delta DPS-650BB 650W PSU, Windows 7 Pro

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        #4
        Re: Evil Lurker's poverty rig... v2.0

        Originally posted by c_hegge View Post
        Dust? look at the pic. there's barely a spec of dust in sight.
        If it hasn't been removed, I'd check anyway... Looks from that angle are sometimes deceiving.
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          #5
          Re: Evil Lurker's poverty rig... v2.0

          If you can see the fins that well, its fine. This is when it's a problem...

          I love putting bad caps and flat batteries in fire and watching them explode!!

          No wonder it doesn't work! You installed the jumper wires backwards

          Main PC: Core i7 3770K 3.5GHz, Gigabyte GA-Z77M-D3H-MVP, 8GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600, 240GB Intel 335 Series SSD, 750GB WD HDD, Sony Optiarc DVD RW, Palit nVidia GTX660 Ti, CoolerMaster N200 Case, Delta DPS-600MB 600W PSU, Hauppauge TV Tuner, Windows 7 Home Premium

          Office PC: HP ProLiant ML150 G3, 2x Xeon E5335 2GHz, 4GB DDR2 RAM, 120GB Intel 530 SSD, 2x 250GB HDD, 2x 450GB 15K SAS HDD in RAID 1, 1x 2TB HDD, nVidia 8400GS, Delta DPS-650BB 650W PSU, Windows 7 Pro

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            #6
            Re: Evil Lurker's poverty rig... v2.0

            Actually I think the only cleaning I done to the inside of it was to sloppily take a q-tip to the inside of a couple fan blades. I wonder if the dork squad cleaned it for me.

            Also speaking of wondering, I'm not for sure why it has a separate NIC in it when there is a port on the motherboard.

            Also I think I see a couple GSC caps on the mobo. Those will probably need to go at some point.

            Attached Files
            Last edited by Evil Lurker; 06-21-2012, 05:04 AM.

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              #7
              Re: Evil Lurker's poverty rig... v2.0

              The graphics card should be cooled well enough by the side vent.

              Originally posted by ratdude747 View Post
              10+ years old and riddled with bad caps
              That sounds like my computer.

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                #8
                Re: Evil Lurker's poverty rig... v2.0

                This afternoon I finally got around to attempting a BSEL mod using an extremely overpriced CircuitWriter pen from Radidio Shack. The results? Well it worked. Sorta.







                Basically I got nothing when attempting to use my DDR3-1600 Gskill memory... nothing but one big long continuous beep. Tried clearing the bios, single stick, one new stick one old stick nothing. Popping in the old memory resulted in the computer booting up into windows, but it was behaving quite weirdly. Prime95 would run, but took a while for both cores to come up to full load, and CPUID was reporting that the CPU was indeed running at 1066FSB and 3.4ghz. But it was also reporting a 2.0v vcore. Temps were below below the previous typical readings of 68C. After noticing the core voltage reading I had to forcefully shut down the PC by yanking the power cord. So I think its definitely safe to say my CPU is capable of a 30% overclock, but my motherboard is just a crappy POS that won't let me.

                Also have a couple side notes about the CircuitWriter pen and the stock heatsink goop. The pen does indeed work as advertised and the shit is conductive as all hell. Easily passed the DMM bleep test with flying colors. I think it should be mentioned that the pen was dried up and clogged when I got it. Had to immerse the tip in some camp fuel (petroleum ether aliphatic hydrocarbon blend... pretty gentle stuff compared to benzene derivatives like toluene and xylene). Once I got the pen going I found the ink or whatever is not very easy to apply neatly. It seems like it does not want to drag evenly across the PCB, rather it wants to sort of blob up on the sides of the trace being drawn and leave a hollow part down the center. Of course that can be overcome by gently squeezing the pen but that makes over application very easy. Its actually a whole hell of a lot like the consistency of white out. Also the ink doesn't seem to want to stick to the PCB worth a damn and the traces are easily scraped off with fingernails even after several hours of curing, which can be a good or bad thing. Any oops can easily be completely removed with a q-tip and a bit of camp fuel while still wet. And possibly the most important thing that comes to mind that when using one of these things on a CPU (or anything else for that matter) is it doesn't take shit to short out a couple pads with a near invisible "ink whisker".

                On the upside I found out why my CPU was running so damn hot... way too much shitty thermal compound was applied to the base of the CPU. My CPU temps with Artic Silver 5 have not gone over 59C after an hour of Prime95 (and this is without the side fan running), and eventually settled to around an average 56C... this is typical of AS5 it takes a while for it to "cure". I did notice however that during the stress testing the north bridge heatsink was getting hot as hades, so for now the side fan stays.

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                  #9
                  Re: Evil Lurker's poverty rig... v2.0

                  Originally posted by Evil Lurker View Post
                  On the upside I found out why my CPU was running so damn hot... way too much shitty thermal compound was applied to the base of the CPU.
                  That, combined with the shitty all-aluminum cooler

                  BTW.. If you really want to stress Core2-based CPUs, forget about prime95. Try Coredamage instead.
                  This will load up the CPU so much that even updating the mouse cursor position can get pretty choppy..

                  Little warning though: once you start the program, it'll immediately start loading up the CPU. There's no start/stop/pause option, so it's better to have a good temperature readout tool like Realtemp or CoreTemp running before you start Coredamage.

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                    #10
                    Re: Evil Lurker's poverty rig... v2.0

                    Ditch that Gskill Ram. Their standards are so low that a "pass" at the factory is no less than 2 Memtest86 errors. For any good brand, a "pass" is only if there are NO errors.
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                      #11
                      Re: Evil Lurker's poverty rig... v2.0

                      Originally posted by Scenic View Post
                      That, combined with the shitty all-aluminum cooler
                      I hate to tell you, even those aluminum coolers are better than many heat pipe heatsinks, especially my Thermaltake V1!

                      And Intel Burn Test is good for testing core temps and for errors at the same time!

                      And I don't recommend heat pipe heatsinks for cold air duct techniques.
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                        #12
                        Re: Evil Lurker's poverty rig... v2.0

                        Originally posted by ratdude747 View Post
                        Ditch that Gskill Ram. Their standards are so low that a "pass" at the factory is no less than 2 Memtest86 errors. For any good brand, a "pass" is only if there are NO errors.
                        I doubt it can be worse than DDR2 Micron D9s. IIRC, people at overclockers.com reported premature failures with DDR2 D9s. Especially Ballistix. Apparently, those chips were lucky to last 2 years!

                        And I haven't heard of GSkill being that bad. O_O

                        Haven't heard of anything bad with DDR3 chips.
                        Last edited by RJARRRPCGP; 06-24-2012, 08:27 PM.
                        ASRock B550 PG Velocita

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                        Alienware AW3423DWF OLED




                        "¡Me encanta "Me Encanta o Enlistarlo con Hilary Farr!" -Mí mismo

                        "There's nothing more unattractive than a chick smoking a cigarette" -Topcat

                        "Today's lesson in pissivity comes in the form of a ziplock baggie full of GPU extension brackets & hardware that for the last ~3 years have been on my bench, always in my way, getting moved around constantly....and yesterday I found myself in need of them....and the bastards are now nowhere to be found! Motherfracker!!" -Topcat

                        "did I see a chair fly? I think I did! Time for popcorn!" -ratdude747

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                          #13
                          Re: Evil Lurker's poverty rig... v2.0

                          Originally posted by RJARRRPCGP View Post
                          I doubt it can be worse than DDR2 Micron D9s. IIRC, people at overclockers.com reported premature failures with DDR2 D9s. Especially Ballistix.
                          I'm sorry, but if a company must lower their standards by that amount to get a profitable yield, then their products must me pretty crappy. Not to mention that just one error could cause massive problems/headaches. It's like if you bought a car and the manufacturer would pass engines with only 1 dead cylinder...
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                            #14
                            Re: Evil Lurker's poverty rig... v2.0

                            Originally posted by ratdude747 View Post
                            I'm sorry, but if a company must lower their standards by that amount to get a profitable yield, then their products must me pretty crappy. Not to mention that just one error could cause massive problems/headaches. It's like if you bought a car and the manufacturer would pass engines with only 1 dead cylinder...
                            I should have saw a flood of reports about that at Overclockers.com then.

                            More likely to just get Kingston now.
                            ASRock B550 PG Velocita

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                            Alienware AW3423DWF OLED




                            "¡Me encanta "Me Encanta o Enlistarlo con Hilary Farr!" -Mí mismo

                            "There's nothing more unattractive than a chick smoking a cigarette" -Topcat

                            "Today's lesson in pissivity comes in the form of a ziplock baggie full of GPU extension brackets & hardware that for the last ~3 years have been on my bench, always in my way, getting moved around constantly....and yesterday I found myself in need of them....and the bastards are now nowhere to be found! Motherfracker!!" -Topcat

                            "did I see a chair fly? I think I did! Time for popcorn!" -ratdude747

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                              #15
                              Re: Evil Lurker's poverty rig... v2.0

                              And the Vcore thing, sounds like you may have bridged wrong pins. Sorry.

                              Looks like it turned the Vcore up real high so it blazed when idle.
                              ASRock B550 PG Velocita

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                              Alienware AW3423DWF OLED




                              "¡Me encanta "Me Encanta o Enlistarlo con Hilary Farr!" -Mí mismo

                              "There's nothing more unattractive than a chick smoking a cigarette" -Topcat

                              "Today's lesson in pissivity comes in the form of a ziplock baggie full of GPU extension brackets & hardware that for the last ~3 years have been on my bench, always in my way, getting moved around constantly....and yesterday I found myself in need of them....and the bastards are now nowhere to be found! Motherfracker!!" -Topcat

                              "did I see a chair fly? I think I did! Time for popcorn!" -ratdude747

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                                #16
                                Re: Evil Lurker's poverty rig... v2.0

                                Originally posted by RJARRRPCGP View Post
                                I hate to tell you, even those aluminum coolers are better than many heat pipe heatsinks, especially my Thermaltake V1!
                                I thought that too so I pitted 3 of my favorite all aluminum Socket AM2 heat sink against the stock AMD AM3 heat pipe heat sink, all on a Phenom X6 with all guns blazing prime95 CPU stress test.

                                The 3 aluminum heat sinks topped out at 68*F. The only difference was how long they took to get there. The AMD heat sink topped out at 55*C. Solid metal can't flow heat like the refrigerant in the heat pipes can.

                                The AMD heat pipe cooler sucks because the fins are too close together to allow much airflow but it did work.
                                sig files are for morons

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                                  #17
                                  Re: Evil Lurker's poverty rig... v2.0

                                  Originally posted by Evil Lurker View Post
                                  On the upside I found out why my CPU was running so damn hot... way too much shitty thermal compound was applied to the base of the CPU.
                                  Typical for an OEM builds.

                                  When I was refurbishing some HP/Compaq DC5000 SFF computers at my old job, all of them had way, way too much thermal compound. I used AS Ceramique after cleaning the old compound and found there to be a big difference in fan noise. With the stock thermal compound, the CPU fan would rev up as soon as something CPU-intensive occurred. On the other hand, with a very very thin layer of AS Ceramique, it would take a minute or two before the CPU fan started revving - so obviously the thermal transfer was much better. Unfortunately I could not measure the before/after temperatures since the board didn't have any built-in sensors (again something typical of OEMs that I really really dislike).

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                                    #18
                                    Re: Evil Lurker's poverty rig... v2.0

                                    FYI, you could have swapped the hdd and used linux... there is a linux program called lm-sensors that would help. (this sometimes picks up sensors that windows based stuff misses)

                                    Usage: (in a terminal)

                                    (su) sensors-detect - this is used after the install to detect the sensors. follow the directions, I always select Y for my answer to the questions and afterwards running the command listed to add the new modules.

                                    sensors - this displays the current readings on the sensors.

                                    If you use something debian based, (debian, ubuntu , linux mint), there is a program called "xsensors" that after the sensors-detect process above will give graphical real-time feedback. Just be aware that Xsensors may get thermal units wrong, specifically when it says C but it should be F. Usually this doesn't happen that often.
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                                      #19
                                      Re: Evil Lurker's poverty rig... v2.0

                                      Originally posted by severach View Post
                                      I thought that too so I pitted 3 of my favorite all aluminum Socket AM2 heat sink against the stock AMD AM3 heat pipe heat sink, all on a Phenom X6 with all guns blazing prime95 CPU stress test.

                                      The 3 aluminum heat sinks topped out at 68*F. The only difference was how long they took to get there. The AMD heat sink topped out at 55*C. Solid metal can't flow heat like the refrigerant in the heat pipes can.

                                      The AMD heat pipe cooler sucks because the fins are too close together to allow much airflow but it did work.
                                      With my Thermaltake V1, I get about 90 C at load when running Prime95 with my E4500!
                                      ASRock B550 PG Velocita

                                      Ryzen 9 "Vermeer" 5900X

                                      16 GB AData XPG Spectrix D41

                                      Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 6750 XT

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                                      Alienware AW3423DWF OLED




                                      "¡Me encanta "Me Encanta o Enlistarlo con Hilary Farr!" -Mí mismo

                                      "There's nothing more unattractive than a chick smoking a cigarette" -Topcat

                                      "Today's lesson in pissivity comes in the form of a ziplock baggie full of GPU extension brackets & hardware that for the last ~3 years have been on my bench, always in my way, getting moved around constantly....and yesterday I found myself in need of them....and the bastards are now nowhere to be found! Motherfracker!!" -Topcat

                                      "did I see a chair fly? I think I did! Time for popcorn!" -ratdude747

                                      Comment


                                        #20
                                        Re: Evil Lurker's poverty rig... v2.0

                                        ^ Must be one heck of a shitty cooler or it's not mounted right.
                                        Another possibility is that the heatpipes (if it has any) have leaked. I've had one cooler (Thermalright XP-120) with that problem before. Heat transfer was basically nonexistant, with the CPU idling at 50+°C. Same CPU with an intel boxed cooler (the thin one, but with a copper core) was at 36°C idle.

                                        I've had a E4300 (1.8GHz) running at 3GHz (link) for well over 2 years with a dirt cheap cooler (Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro). It never even came close to 60°C while torture testing for stability problems.
                                        In fact, I'm still using the same model cooler on my Core 2 Quad Q6600. It isn't really up to the job of cooling a 95W TDP CPU with OC from 2.4 to 3.6GHz (quickly reaching 70°C with coredamage), but for normal high loads, i.e. playing games etc., it's still in the ballpark (around 60-65°C), but only just..

                                        And BTW.. if your E4500 really reaches 90°C, it'll be throttling (leaving out clock cycles to not fry itself) like shit, as the maximum operating temperature for the E4500 is 73.3°C (link).

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