best cheap/free scores 1.1

[Dan81]

Originally Posted by stj

nice, the "G" is the last decent model.
after that they started storing much of the o.s. on the harddrive to use smaller flash chips..

It's loud as well (thanks to the Delta fan that it probably has for the PSU) but it works like a charm.

EDIT:My 380V post!

[momaka]

Originally Posted by Dan81

Got a 40GB CECHG04 PS3,free with AV cord and two controllers

Nice score!

Originally Posted by Dan81

I was actually surprised this thing didn't die (knock on wood!) because of the infamous YLOD.

Let's hope it stays that way.
The repair shop I worked in dealt mostly with consoles. When it comes to repairs, I rarely had any problems to get an Xbox 360 going. But PS3s... I absolutely hated those. Don't think I ever managed to fix one.

That said, I'm still wondering if I should look for a used one. As much as I hate consoles in general, there is this game called The Last of Us. Probably one of the best games I've seen, but it's a Sony PS3/PS4 exclusive. :\

Originally Posted by Dan81

It's loud as well (thanks to the Delta fan that it probably has for the PSU) but it works like a charm.

Nah, no PSU fans in those. There is only one big squirrel cage fan at the bottom of these, used for cooling everything. PSU gets very little air flow through it, so make sure to *never* run it with the top cover off. Also some PSU models, like the ZSSR539IA, have a lot of problems because they overheat. I think most of these are made by Nichicon, but I don't remember any more. The ones made by Sony are fine.

[Dan81]

Originally Posted by momaka

The repair shop I worked in dealt mostly with consoles. When it comes to repairs, I rarely had any problems to get an Xbox 360 going. But PS3s... I absolutely hated those. Don't think I ever managed to fix one.

That said, I'm still wondering if I should look for a used one. As much as I hate consoles in general, there is this game called The Last of Us. Probably one of the best games I've seen, but it's a Sony PS3/PS4 exclusive. :\

If those broken PS3s were simply YLOD-ding that can be fixed (permanently I think) by reballing the CPU and GPU.

[Dan81]

Well,it's me again. Another score:

ModeCom FEEL-400ATX w/ PFC.

Label:
3.3v - 28A
5v - 30A
12v-20A


I just got it,along with a 3.5mm splitter. I could tell from a mile it's a Deer disguised in TWO (yes,TWO!) companies - ModeCom's uses Allied as OEM for some of their PSUS,which in turn Allied has Deer as OEM. (just so you all know - not all Modecom PSUs are Deer - the ones that are Deer usually bear a "FE01XC" code specific to Deer,while those that do not have that specific code are OEM'd by DVE or possibly CWT as well.

Since I can't post pics (phone stolen from me),I'll just explain the insides to you:

-HUGE 680uF 200V YC primaries - yes,those were really huge! In fact,they were so huge I had to resolder them,due to them not being soldered so good,and the fact that they were heavy.
-PFC coil - nothing special,just makes my life harder when disassembling the unit
-Xinruilian fan - seems like brand new aside from light film of dust. Spins freely,still has loads of oil!
-receptacle filtering board - real nice job - they even used heatshrink on the Y caps,and yes,those Y caps are REAL! They're really huge as well - I can say Modecom must have paid a lot for this.
-normal sized transformers + TRUE ERL-35-2005 transformer - I was really shocked to find normal-sized transformers (not the tiny ones in other Deers) and a really big ERL-35 transformer.
-18AWG wires for 3.3,5 and 12V - should be good when it comes to PSUs,right?
-30A rectifier for 3.3v,dunno for the rest (couldn't read the rest of them,but I know 5v has two rectifiers in parallel)
-bulged secondary caps - apart from the 5vsb Su'scon (not bulged but I replaced them anyways,wouldn't trust them at all even on low values) every YC on the secondary was basically blown
-NTC thermistor for the fan - No wonder why the caps blown. As soon as I fixed the PSU (replaced the caps), I could notice the fan was running so slow. It's going to be removed,I don't need no troubles because of it.
-honeycomb grille - typical for Allied. (L&C and Deer didn't use it AFAIK)

Lo' and behold,it actually works,after I nearly went crazy replacing the caps. I used OST RLX and UCC KY (and a few KZE as well)

Here's a picture from a Polish site. It looks the same as mine except for the caps which I replaced on mine.

[juliadream]

how bout 3x 500GB hdd's from some sky boxes that were going in the trash? WD Caviar Greens.... mega score.. freeeeeee !!!

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by juliadream

how bout 3x 500GB hdd's from some sky boxes that were going in the trash? WD Caviar Greens.... mega score.. freeeeeee !!!

When they fry who will be laughing then?

Not to be a party pooper, but my 2TB one out of a a mybook for mac didn't last... all it was used for was a storage drive on a file server. Cooked while I was on vacation.

They'll be slow too... just don't use them for anything critical.

[Dan81]

Originally Posted by juliadream

how bout 3x 500GB hdd's from some sky boxes that were going in the trash? WD Caviar Greens.... mega score.. freeeeeee !!!

Green WDs...weren't those the ones that would run slow enough to pull your hair out?

[juliadream]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

When they fry who will be laughing then?

Not to be a party pooper, but my 2TB one out of a a mybook for mac didn't last... all it was used for was a storage drive on a file server. Cooked while I was on vacation.

They'll be slow too... just don't use them for anything critical.

shoved in my main tower as storage space.. nothing else.. 100% on test.. no reallocated sectors.. less that 2k hours on them all. hell speed?.. on my hardware speed isn't an issue.. 200mhz fsb and a single core athlon 3400+.. yeah.. hdd speed is going to be a factor?.. these drtives are better than anything available when my mobo was made... I'm still booting off an ide drive goddammit !!!! old skool to the max (and poor.. very poor)

[Compgeke]

Related to hard drives, picked up 4x 146 gig Seagate 15k.6 drives for $15 shipped, aka what it cost to shove 'em in a flat rate box. Shoved 'em in my Dell T3500 with the PERC 6/i in RAID 5 to replace a troublesome 3x 500 gig SATA RAID 5. Much faster and no more random hangs.

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by Compgeke

Related to hard drives, picked up 4x 146 gig Seagate 15k.6 drives for $15 shipped, aka what it cost to shove 'em in a flat rate box. Shoved 'em in my Dell T3500 with the PERC 6/i in RAID 5 to replace a troublesome 3x 500 gig SATA RAID 5. Much faster and no more random hangs.

They're nice drives indeed. I have the Hitachi version x4 in my main rig.

That said I also have a 3x 500GB RAID setup on a 5/i in my parents' server, no issues there.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

aye, i really hated those wd green drives. doesnt ever last. beware, they are rebadging the green line of drives as blue now so beware and dont be fooled...!

[dmill89]

Originally Posted by ChaosLegionnaire

aye, i really hated those wd green drives. doesnt ever last. beware, they are rebadging the green line of drives as blue now so beware and dont be fooled...!

As a rule I wouldn't touch a <7,200rpm desktop HDD (at least a recent one) with a 10ft pole. The power savings are so minimal (who cares about a couple watts in a desktop?) the only reason to make a desktop drive slower than 7,200rpm is cost, which generally means a "bargain-basement" quality drive that won't hold up. Not to mention that there really aren't much/any savings on price (to the consumer), if you look around/can wait you can generally find 7.200rpm drives on sale for what the slower drives go for. I just popped out to Newegg and right now the 1TB 5,400rpm "blue" (rebadged green) actually costs $4 more than the 7200rpm blue (the "real" blue drive), same with Toshiba (the 5,700rpm E300 is $1 more than the 7,200rpm P300), and Seagate (the 5,900rpm ST1000VM002 is $6 more than the 7,200rpm ST1000DM003). Who do they think they're kidding, why on earth would anyone pay more for a slower HDD?

[stj]

i only buy black drives - mostly for the warranty.

[TechGeek]

and speed. have 2x WD2003FZEX drives installed... nice and fast

[momaka]

Ah, I couldn't resist the temptation of a good deal again.

Last week I got 10x faulty ATI Radeon HD4850 video cards off of eBay for $18 shipped... i.e. pretty much what it cost the seller to "shove 'em in a flat rate box", as Compgeke said above. The auction ended for $0.80 or something like that. No one else besides me put a bid either .

That said, I expected nothing from these cards... but I had one video card working right out of the box. It just had a damaged pin in one of the DVI ports, so I used the other.

Then I tested two more video cards. Of these, one showed no video and the other had artifacts. In fact, looking through the box, most were labeled as having either artifacts or no video. Of course, those are classic BGA issues on high-end video cards that run hot, so I was expecting this 100%.

Took the no-video GPU above and gave it a quick reflow... if you can even call it that, because the PCBs on these cards will sink heat away from the GPU quite well. Don't think I managed to get anywhere near close to proper lead-free solder reflow temperatures (about 220C)... but I decided to test the card anyways after that. And it worked!

That makes it two working Radeon HD4850 video cards for $18 so far. Not quite "the best" score, but still more than alright, IMO. Now I have eight more to go . Will make a thread on that sometime this summer if/when I get done with them. They definitely need some proper (ghetto? ) heatsink moding from me as well, if I want them to last. With the stock heatsink, these cards really do run hot enough to burn your hand... so the few reviews online that mentioned that weren't actually joking!

[momaka]

Originally Posted by Dan81

If those broken PS3s were simply YLOD-ding that can be fixed (permanently I think) by reballing the CPU and GPU.

That's way easier said than done. Even with a proper machine, there are still a lot of things that can go wrong doing that. The copper heat spreaders are annoying as hell too - really hard to put new balls on the chip just with a regular hot air wand.

Also, the PS3 GPU is based on the nVidia GeForce 7800 GTX, if I remember correctly. And if you had a 7 or 8 series PC video card artifact, there's a good chance it's gone kaput due to the bumpgate issue.

Originally Posted by Dan81

...
ModeCom FEEL-400ATX w/ PFC.
...
-HUGE 680uF 200V YC primaries - yes,those were really huge! In fact,they were so huge I had to resolder them,due to them not being soldered so good,and the fact that they were heavy.

Oh, are you sure you are not just too used to seeing small teeny tiny 330/470 uF primary caps in those Deers, and now a 680 uF cap seems big?

I have an old Astec 200 Watt server PSU. That thing has 2x 1200 uF primary caps - now those are HUGE. About the size of a D cell battery.

Originally Posted by Dan81

-receptacle filtering board - real nice job - they even used heatshrink on the Y caps,and yes,those Y caps are REAL! They're really huge as well - I can say Modecom must have paid a lot for this.

Lol, they better not. Those filtering components are not a rare premium feature - they are *required* by FCC laws (or equivalent in your country), and technically every PSU is supposed to have them.

That said, this obviously shows that when Deer/Solytech wants to make a half-decent PSU, they can. I guess this is probably one of the very few units that is complete with input filtering, PPFC, and everything. To bad they used cheap caps again. But I guess it is also good that they used cheap caps, because that's how you were able to get a cheap score on this PSU.

Originally Posted by juliadream

how bout 3x 500GB hdd's from some sky boxes that were going in the trash? WD Caviar Greens.... mega score.. freeeeeee !!!

Nice.
Yes, the WD Greens are NOT very reliable, and I don't know if the option to disable head park and disk spin-down during idle on the newer units is still possible (look up your models online). But if it IS, definitely make sure to disable that option. High load/unload count is known to be a major cause of demise for these HDDs.

Originally Posted by juliadream

hell speed?.. on my hardware speed isn't an issue.. 200mhz fsb and a single core athlon 3400+.. yeah.. hdd speed is going to be a factor?..

It still can. I think I remember seeing a video on YouTube of someone putting a SSD in a Pentium 3 or some equally old system, and it still booted in seconds. So don't underestimate the speed of that single core Athlon CPU you have. My secondary tower PC has an Athlon 64 3000+ CPU in it, and with a slow & faulty 500 GB Seagate HDD, it takes longer than it should to boot.

Originally Posted by juliadream

I'm still booting off an ide drive goddammit !!!! old skool to the max (and poor.. very poor)

Same here. 80 GB Spinpoint in a Dell OptiPlex 170L. Works fine for my needs.

Originally Posted by Compgeke

Related to hard drives, picked up 4x 146 gig Seagate 15k.6 drives for $15 shipped, aka what it cost to shove 'em in a flat rate box.

eBay?
I love deals like that . I think it was a year or so ago when I got 6 SCA server HDDs for $13 shipped (the post about that should be a few pages back, if anyone cares to look). Two of them were 300 GB Seagate Cheetah 10k drives. Just those two alone made the deal worthwhile. It's amazing how easy it is to find used server-quality HDDs for cheap nowadays.

[Wester547]

Jeez, 1200uF primaries in a 200W PSU. What, is the thing rated for 200W @ 75*C ambient?

Originally Posted by momaka

Nice.
Yes, the WD Greens are NOT very reliable, and I don't know if the option to disable head park and disk spin-down during idle on the newer units is still possible (look up your models online). But if it IS, definitely make sure to disable that option. High load/unload count is known to be a major cause of demise for these HDDs.

I'm not sure how people arrive to this conclusion.

Well, constant spin up/down may be bad for the drive, but IMHO, there is no evidence that head parking (ramp load technology) has anything to do with HDD failures. Most drives are guaranteed for 600,000 unload/load cycles at room temperature and that's the minimum spec. I guess it could theoretically put more wear on the magnetic head assembly, but the contact start/stop slider is probably the first thing that would stop working with too many load/unload cycles (greatly in excess of a million) or start/stop counts (over 50,000-60,000 at room temperature). Head parking probably isn't well suited to drives where which the OS is actually installed, because the default timers are too aggressive and the recovery time that the heads need to return to the platters can prove to be a bottleneck of sorts.

Head parking is fine, possibly even preferable, for an external hard drive or even a secondary storage drive because when the head stack assembly is loaded on the ramp instead of hovering over the platters just a few nanometers above the magnetic coating (the media to which the data is written and read from), the chance of a head crash is greatly minimized (assuming the drive isn't incessantly reading and writing data) and the operating shock as well as the non-operating shock spec is quite a bit higher. Of course, many manufactures do take the precaution of adding a special coat of film to the magnetic coating, or a thin layer of electrostatic lubricant so as to protect the media from head scratching, so if the heads do come into contact with the media, they'll just glance off it briefly (which also helps given the ever decreasing flying height of the head stack). Head parking avoids stiction as well - the heads won't be as likely to get stuck on the platters.

I would be more worried about glass platters, that which actually mandates ramp loading technology because the heads tend to be more likely to "stick" to the smooth glass that the platters are made of so it's safer to keep them loaded onto the ramp (and in order to keep the platters in place during shipping, which the HSA on the landing zone previously did, a tied fluid dynamic bearing shaft is usually used rather than a rotating one). The fact that glass platters more rigid than metal platters is all well and good (more resilient to thermal expansion and contraction) and they're certainly smoother, but more fragile at the same time. Ceramic inserts and composites are used in the glass platters to reduce the likelihood of fracturing, but inadvertently drop a hard drive with glass platters far enough and the platters will certainly shatter into many a fragment. Then try running it, and you'll truly hear the nails scratching on the chalkboard for the first time ever. ...Joking aside, hard drives with metal platters don't have that problem.

...

I think the WD green drives are less reliable than the blue and black drives just because they're "budget" drives. They are not built to the same standards as the WD drives with longer warranties, those actually suited for 24/7 use. Cheap is cheap, and cheap will always be cheap. FWIW, I've seen far more Scorpio Blue drives die a quick death than Caviar Green drives (although both err on the failure prone side).

[stj]

i just got this delivered.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/181573121672

2.4GHz frequency counter for that price is amazing.
and this thing is incredibly sensitive.
i put a 2way radio antenna next to the input wire, no direct connection.
hit PTT and it locked on at 446MHz instantly!!!!!

i think i want to case it with a BNC socket so i can use a scope probe or antenna on it

[vinceroger69]

Originally Posted by stj

i just got this delivered.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/181573121672

2.4GHz frequency counter for that price is amazing.
and this thing is incredibly sensitive.
i put a 2way radio antenna next to the input wire, no direct connection.
hit PTT and it locked on at 446MHz instantly!!!!!

i think i want to case it with a BNC socket so i can use a scope probe or antenna on it

what can these be used for? i will have a read up on them but you have probably used these before.

[mmartell]

Found an iMac 10,1 curbside with a smashed glass but fully functioning besides missing the wifi antenna and wifi to motherboard cable. Yes it's older but they seem retain value well and my daughter is thrilled because it will soon be hers.