Hi Guys,
I actually have something relevant to contribute today! I bought this MSI P45 Neo (MS-7519) motherboard months ago on ebay. I bought it for a couple of dollars because the seller said it didn't work at all, from the pictures, the LGA 775 socket didn't look trashed, so I rolled the dice and bought it. When I got the board, since I didn't have any CPUs or RAM that were compatible, I was unable to test it, but I have no doubt that the board was non-functional based on the fact that every single one of those awful OST capacitors that cover the board were either bulging at the top or pushing out their bungs.
So, I decided to recap the board, and as an experiment, I wanted to use entirely polymer capacitors. I was able to find suitable polymer capacitors for all of the capacitors except for the ten little capacitors at the bottom left hand side of board populated near the audio chip. It was awhile ago that I executed the recapping, but if I remember correctly, I used Nichicon LE, LF, LG, and FP capacitors for all of the polymers, and Panasonic FC and FR for the ten little non-polymer capacitors.
I scored an Intel Core Quad Q6600 for pretty cheap on ebay, but this board requires DDR2 1066MHz 1.8V RAM (well, actually it can take other speeds, but it must be 1.8V modules), and finding cheap 1.8V DDR2 modules is like trying to find hens' teeth. So, the board sat in my projects in progress bin for the last 6 months. Since I am moving in a couple of weeks, I've been trying to push to finish a bunch of projects, so I will have less to move, so, I broke down and shelled out the cash to buy two new 1GB 1066MHz modules from Crucial.
The board booted right up with no problems. I fleshed the system out in a Cooler Master Elite case, and I dropped in an NVidia Quadro 1800 FX video card that I also got for cheap, and installed a Scythe Big Shuriken cooler. I booted into Windows XP Pro and proceeded to run burn-in tests and so on, and the system is stable as a rock! As an aside, I am pretty impressed with the CPU cooler, it isn't even warm to the touch and it is silent, if the thing had been easier to install, I would say its one of the best CPU heatsinks and fans I've ever used. The hottest places in this system are the southbridge and the video card.
My plans for the system are to bring it into my place of employment and upgrade the piece of garbage computer I have to use, I am just going to take the hard drive and optical drive out of the old system and install them into the new system. The existing workstation is an ancient Dell OptiPlex 210L that clearly has something wrong with it, even simple browsing of the web takes about 5 minutes to go from page to page, and the fans inside of it spin up and sound like jet engines. The thing is awful, really all I think it actually does anymore is convert electricity into heat, it's gotten bad enough that I just use my laptop unless there is something I have to do on my workstation. Upper management doesn't really seem to care that the computer is useless, and they don't care if I upgrade it, so since I don't have anything better to do with my recapped system, I guess they're getting a donation.
I've posted some pictures of the motherboard in the case, months ago, I did take "before" pictures, but I've lost them, and since the cooler was so difficult to install, I didn't want to take it off the board to get pictures of the caps around the CPU. Sorry about that. Most of the bulgy caps were around the northbridge and the RAM slots.
Enjoy, and if you have any questions feel free to ask.
Yours,
Justin
I actually have something relevant to contribute today! I bought this MSI P45 Neo (MS-7519) motherboard months ago on ebay. I bought it for a couple of dollars because the seller said it didn't work at all, from the pictures, the LGA 775 socket didn't look trashed, so I rolled the dice and bought it. When I got the board, since I didn't have any CPUs or RAM that were compatible, I was unable to test it, but I have no doubt that the board was non-functional based on the fact that every single one of those awful OST capacitors that cover the board were either bulging at the top or pushing out their bungs.
So, I decided to recap the board, and as an experiment, I wanted to use entirely polymer capacitors. I was able to find suitable polymer capacitors for all of the capacitors except for the ten little capacitors at the bottom left hand side of board populated near the audio chip. It was awhile ago that I executed the recapping, but if I remember correctly, I used Nichicon LE, LF, LG, and FP capacitors for all of the polymers, and Panasonic FC and FR for the ten little non-polymer capacitors.
I scored an Intel Core Quad Q6600 for pretty cheap on ebay, but this board requires DDR2 1066MHz 1.8V RAM (well, actually it can take other speeds, but it must be 1.8V modules), and finding cheap 1.8V DDR2 modules is like trying to find hens' teeth. So, the board sat in my projects in progress bin for the last 6 months. Since I am moving in a couple of weeks, I've been trying to push to finish a bunch of projects, so I will have less to move, so, I broke down and shelled out the cash to buy two new 1GB 1066MHz modules from Crucial.
The board booted right up with no problems. I fleshed the system out in a Cooler Master Elite case, and I dropped in an NVidia Quadro 1800 FX video card that I also got for cheap, and installed a Scythe Big Shuriken cooler. I booted into Windows XP Pro and proceeded to run burn-in tests and so on, and the system is stable as a rock! As an aside, I am pretty impressed with the CPU cooler, it isn't even warm to the touch and it is silent, if the thing had been easier to install, I would say its one of the best CPU heatsinks and fans I've ever used. The hottest places in this system are the southbridge and the video card.
My plans for the system are to bring it into my place of employment and upgrade the piece of garbage computer I have to use, I am just going to take the hard drive and optical drive out of the old system and install them into the new system. The existing workstation is an ancient Dell OptiPlex 210L that clearly has something wrong with it, even simple browsing of the web takes about 5 minutes to go from page to page, and the fans inside of it spin up and sound like jet engines. The thing is awful, really all I think it actually does anymore is convert electricity into heat, it's gotten bad enough that I just use my laptop unless there is something I have to do on my workstation. Upper management doesn't really seem to care that the computer is useless, and they don't care if I upgrade it, so since I don't have anything better to do with my recapped system, I guess they're getting a donation.
I've posted some pictures of the motherboard in the case, months ago, I did take "before" pictures, but I've lost them, and since the cooler was so difficult to install, I didn't want to take it off the board to get pictures of the caps around the CPU. Sorry about that. Most of the bulgy caps were around the northbridge and the RAM slots.
Enjoy, and if you have any questions feel free to ask.
Yours,
Justin
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