Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

[Topcat]

Ok, I ended up with a couple more of these turds in big tin cans a couple weeks ago....



What better to rehouse this than some HP slimline 3000 series AM2 with a bad motherboard.....





The board. I added a 40mm fan to the forward side of the sink. The original case had a 90mm fan drawing air across this sink....and we all know AMD stuff running hot! This slimline had no case fans other than the one in the PSU, which was removed....so I figured something had to be added. This ended up being a bit of a goof, but easily remedied....more later.



Now popped the original IO shield and had to mod the new one for the wifi antenna. I didn't do the antenna in the PSU blockoff plate this time, the cable was too short.



Drilled and DEBURRED!



Now to debadge the case....



Done.



Test fired, booted Hiren's.



Here's where the fan interfered....the optical was hitting it. The solution was simple, relocate it to the AFT end and have it drawing across the sink instead of blowing. Worked like a charm. Yea, looks a little ghetto with the zipties, but it's not going anywhere. There was no cleaner way to fasten it with screws....



A little more engineering....the tabs that held the lower part of the bezel on were broken off.....so I shaved the alignment pins flush with the steel and ran a couple screws into them. Perfect!



Now to fit it for a 2.5" HDD without having to waste an adapter tray (keeping costs down). Simply marked & drilled the 3.5" cage.





I had to use the most flush screws I could find, otherwise it dragged on the ceiling of the cage housing.



...and done!!!





Specs are an AMD APU E2 with 8gb RAM. The spinning 2.5" HDD is just temporary, I'll get a cheap SSD for it.....but here's to one saved from the shredder & repurposed....without the big ass useless tin can case. No OS installed, just used Hiren's and Mint Live boot for testing....I'll install an OS when it gets rehomed.

[momaka]

Originally Posted by Topcat

Ok, I ended up with a couple more of these turds in big tin cans a couple weeks ago....

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1634181990

Ah.... HP "Engineering" again. *sigh*

I never understood why they did that. Such a waste of metal and space. Granted those cases are made of really really thin steel... but still a waste.

Originally Posted by Topcat

What better to rehouse this than some HP slimline 3000 series AM2 with a bad motherboard.....

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1634181990

Let me guess... model number on that board starts with M2N (looks like M2NC51-AR)... so by that, I can only guess it's an nVidia (a.k.a. "noVideo") chipset. If so, that probably explains it all.

If it was a socket 939 system and had a Athlon 64 X2 CPU, certainly save those, as they are getting harder to find. AM2... not so much. In fact, AM2 is pretty much scrap value now... unless you specifically want to run WinXP on something dual-core and "proper" from that era... but dirt-cheap.

*EDIT*
yeah, I see an nVidia sticker on the case...

Originally Posted by Topcat

The board. I added a 40mm fan to the forward side of the sink. The original case had a 90mm fan drawing air across this sink....and we all know AMD stuff running hot!

The AMD APUs run pretty cool, IME. It's just that the stock heatsinks that come with these systems are always inadequate and running either a tiny fan or no fan at all, thus relying on the rear fan (like it was with the original big tincan HP cases above.) It's unfortunate these soldered APUs don't have an AM2 mounting bracket or provision to mount any other kind of heatsink. Otherwise, even a stock slim Intel Al heatsink will work tons better here for cooling. But again... "HP Engineering"

Originally Posted by Topcat

Drilled and DEBURRED!

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1634181990

Glad to see I'm making you do extra work every time now. Wonder how many people cut their fingers on your builds before that.

Originally Posted by Topcat

Here's where the fan interfered....the optical was hitting it. The solution was simple, relocate it to the AFT end and have it drawing across the sink instead of blowing. Worked like a charm. Yea, looks a little ghetto with the zipties, but it's not going anywhere. There was no cleaner way to fasten it with screws....

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1634181990

Ghetto? It looks OK to me. Probably cools better than the original 92 mm fan too, since I didn't see a shroud over the CPU HS in the original case. If HP did that, though, that would have been one helluva cool-running CPU. Dell did this back on their P4 regular tower cases, and it managed to keep those P4s cool, despite all their heat.

Originally Posted by Topcat

A little more engineering....the tabs that held the lower part of the bezel on were broken off.....so I shaved the alignment pins flush with the steel and ran a couple screws into them. Perfect!

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1634181990

Brilliant solution! It's like those plastic pins were made for that.

Originally Posted by Topcat

Now to fit it for a 2.5" HDD without having to waste an adapter tray (keeping costs down). Simply marked & drilled the 3.5" cage.

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1634181990

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1634181990

I had to use the most flush screws I could find, otherwise it dragged on the ceiling of the cage housing.

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1634181990

Neat! I've had to do that before as well.

BTW, if you have a center punch with a larger diameter than the screw head, you can use that to make a flare around the hole in the steel cage. This will also raise the HDD a few mm away from the metal parts... though I don't know if that could also make the original cage not fit 3.5" HDDs anymore, due to the flared metal holes sticking out.

BTW x2... how come you're not re-using the original 3.5" HDDs? Too slow? I suppose if you're going with Windows 10, that's a good enough reason. But for Win7 and older, I still don't mind 7k2 RPM spinners. Every now and then, I still buy 250 GB 3.5" HDDs from Ebay for pretty much the price of shipping. Seems like no one wants HDDs that small or that old. I use them on Win7 machines, and depending on the config (and drivers that have to be loaded), some systems take less than 20 seconds total to get to desktop from pressing the power button.

[lti]

Only having one WiFi antenna and leaving the second antenna connector open is another quality bit of HP "engineering." In this case, there appears to be a second antenna on the front of the case, but I've seen laptops with one antenna.

HP is still using the old Compaq Torx/slotted combo screws, too. It just reminds me of the computers that taught me to save often in case they locked up.

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by momaka

Ah.... HP "Engineering" again. *sigh*

I never understood why they did that. Such a waste of metal and space. Granted those cases are made of really really thin steel... but still a waste.

Agreed. It will be redeemed though, I devised a case crusher using my fork lift. It flattens them out the size their footprint size but about an inch thick. I have the cabin of a junk car filled with many horrible junk cases that are crushed....just waiting to be taken to the steel recycler! They will live again, hopefully as something useful!

Originally Posted by momaka

Let me guess... model number on that board starts with M2N (looks like M2NC51-AR)... so by that, I can only guess it's an nVidia (a.k.a. "noVideo") chipset. If so, that probably explains it all.

Yup. M2NC51-AR....and yup, no video.

Originally Posted by momaka

*EDIT*
yeah, I see an nVidia sticker on the case...

LOL...not that you didn't already know...

Originally Posted by momaka

It's unfortunate these soldered APUs don't have an AM2 mounting bracket or provision to mount any other kind of heatsink. Otherwise, even a stock slim Intel Al heatsink will work tons better here for cooling. But again... "HP Engineering"

Indeed, soldered. Heatsink attaches with the little anchors & hooks like an old world northbridge sink would attach.

Originally Posted by momaka

Glad to see I'm making you do extra work every time now. Wonder how many people cut their fingers on your builds before that.

That will live on in any build that deburring is required!

Originally Posted by momaka

Ghetto? It looks OK to me. Probably cools better than the original 92 mm fan too, since I didn't see a shroud over the CPU HS in the original case. If HP did that, though, that would have been one helluva cool-running CPU. Dell did this back on their P4 regular tower cases, and it managed to keep those P4s cool, despite all their heat.

The CPU would get warm, but not alarmingly so....I still fanned it anyway.

Originally Posted by momaka

Brilliant solution! It's like those plastic pins were made for that.

They had to be shaved about 3/16" to flush up with the steel, otherwise the bezel would still be loose and flop around on that bottom side. It's rock solid now.

Originally Posted by momaka

BTW, if you have a center punch with a larger diameter than the screw head, you can use that to make a flare around the hole in the steel cage. This will also raise the HDD a few mm away from the metal parts... though I don't know if that could also make the original cage not fit 3.5" HDDs anymore, due to the flared metal holes sticking out.

Noted. Ones originally like that are stamped with a press...but yea, a punch and a little finesse would totally work in that case.

Originally Posted by momaka

how come you're not re-using the original 3.5" HDDs? Too slow? I suppose if you're going with Windows 10, that's a good enough reason. But for Win7 and older, I still don't mind 7k2 RPM spinners. Every now and then, I still buy 250 GB 3.5" HDDs from Ebay for pretty much the price of shipping. Seems like no one wants HDDs that small or that old. I use them on Win7 machines, and depending on the config (and drivers that have to be loaded), some systems take less than 20 seconds total to get to desktop from pressing the power button.

The original spinner was a seagate 160gb full of bad sectors. Odds are when rehomed, it'll be doomed with 10....it originally had 8.1 on it, so 10 will activate without any smoke & mirrors....unless I could talk them into 7 or Mint....but most people believe the hype that 7 is insecure...and look at you like you grew another head when you say Linux Mint...

[momaka]

Originally Posted by Topcat

Agreed. It will be redeemed though, I devised a case crusher using my fork lift. It flattens them out the size their footprint size but about an inch thick.

Oh yeah, I saw that in the cheap scores thread when I scrolled through it briefly last time.

Neat way to get rid of cases that aren't worthwhile.
Though I saw the front panel and/or USB/front audio headers were left on a few of the cases. I suppose you have enough of these that don't need any more? They make great retrofits for older beige cases, otherwise, when front USB or audio are needed... or just to replace the crappy cables on an otherwise well-built no-name case (seen a few like that.) Actually, I had to temporarily do a fix on one like that. The USB 2.0 front ports kept dropping out flash drives or Windows saying it's an unrecognized device. A few wraps of aluminum foil, tape, and a grounding wire later, and that fixed the issue with unrecognized devices. Then added an electro cap for filtering + power transients right on the USB port, and that healed the issue with devices dropping out on power-up. But in reality, I really should change that crappy front USB cable. I have one I saved from an HP case that was going to get junked by someone. I keep it in my spare bin for testing certain bare motherboards, though.

Originally Posted by Topcat

LOL...not that you didn't already know...

Yeah, the Vista sticker was a good giveaway clue too. Whoever had that system got the "best" "fully loaded" package - Windows Vista and a crappy nVidia chipset. I mean, what could go wrong?

Originally Posted by Topcat

Indeed, soldered. Heatsink attaches with the little anchors & hooks like an old world northbridge sink would attach.

Oooof. Let's hope they put some good thermal compound in there then.

Originally Posted by Topcat

That will live on in any build that deburring is required!

Originally Posted by Topcat

The original spinner was a seagate 160gb full of bad sectors.

Really? HP put that kind of small HDD on the AMD APU system?
I guess that's a double-whammy with the big hollow tincan cases: so not only you get big empty case, but also big 3.5" HDD that's only 160 GB. Wow!

Perhaps the HDD wasn't original to that system, after all?
Also, which series was the Seagate? 7200.9 or later. If 7200.9 or earlier, it might still hang around with some useful life.

Originally Posted by Topcat

but most people believe the hype that 7 is insecure...

Well, that's what happens when "IT Professionals" write clickbait articles for major "news" sites. I can't tell you how many times I've seen this rhetoric on Yahoo! articles.

Originally Posted by lti

Only having one WiFi antenna and leaving the second antenna connector open is another quality bit of HP "engineering."

Funny you mention this.
I did the same thing, and on a HP mini desktop PC nonetheless , because with both antennas connected, I was getting more frequent WiFi dropouts than with one antenna. In retrospect, though, that might have been an improper solution, as it seems now that the WiFi at my parents' apartment just seems to drop out at certain timeframes of the day, regardless of anything else. It's not the router either (already replaced with another)... nor the ISP (doing a ping to the router's IP - 192.168.1.1 - for 1000 packets, I can confirm the connection drop happens between router and device/PC and not ISP.) Removing one antenna seems to drop the WiFi speed of the connection... but somehow the connection seems to dropout less frequently then.

Originally Posted by lti

HP is still using the old Compaq Torx/slotted combo screws, too.

I genuinely dislike those. If you have a torx driver with a long handle, perhaps it would be tolerable. I don't so I have to use one of those drivers with the short replaceable bits. Problem with that is, the screwdriver handle's body is sometimes too thick to reach in certain areas... and HP always has one or two screws in such areas. Flat heat is not a good alternative either, because I can never grab the screw with it and then move it to the hole without it falling from the screw driver, even if the screwdriver has a good magnetized head.

Don't get me wrong - I like Torx screws for certain applications. But PC cases isn't one of them.

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by momaka

Neat way to get rid of cases that aren't worthwhile.

Any of these really flimsy black cases meet the crusher. The old world gray HP cases (as ugly as they were), I don't crush...they're built like tanks and make great sleepers...I have quite a few of them.

Originally Posted by momaka

Though I saw the front panel and/or USB/front audio headers were left on a few of the cases. I suppose you have enough of these that don't need any more? They make great retrofits for older beige cases, otherwise, when front USB or audio are needed... or just to replace the crappy cables on an otherwise well-built no-name case (seen a few like that.)

I usually pull those and keep them just for that reason. I have a plastic tote full of them.

Originally Posted by momaka

Oooof. Let's hope they put some good thermal compound in there then.

It wasn't terrible....but I cleaned it off and buttered it up with some fresh AS5

Originally Posted by momaka

Really? HP put that kind of small HDD on the AMD APU system?
I guess that's a double-whammy with the big hollow tincan cases: so not only you get big empty case, but also big 3.5" HDD that's only 160 GB. Wow!

I lied....it was a 500gb seagate. I don't know why I had 160 in my brain when I typed that....old age I suppose....but yea, full of bad sectors.

Originally Posted by momaka

Perhaps the HDD wasn't original to that system, after all?
Also, which series was the Seagate? 7200.9 or later. If 7200.9 or earlier, it might still hang around with some useful life.

It probably was. It's in a big box of bad hdd's I have here....I take them to the Sheriff's department and give them to them. They take them to the range and use them for target practice.

Originally Posted by momaka

I genuinely dislike those. If you have a torx driver with a long handle, perhaps it would be tolerable. I don't so I have to use one of those drivers with the short replaceable bits. Problem with that is, the screwdriver handle's body is sometimes too thick to reach in certain areas... and HP always has one or two screws in such areas. Flat heat is not a good alternative either, because I can never grab the screw with it and then move it to the hole without it falling from the screw driver, even if the screwdriver has a good magnetized head.

Don't get me wrong - I like Torx screws for certain applications. But PC cases isn't one of them.

I dont mind them....it just annoys me when they're hybrid; some philips some torx....and then I have to go get extra tools...

[Topcat]

Kind of a special build, but not special enough for a thread of its own..... This Shuttle ST61 G4 SKT478 P4 system has been a BCN member whore.... If I have the history right, it originated with Kerijane many moons ago, was then passed onto Hondaman, then Ratdude.....and finally me. I don't know where it died.....but it never worked for Ratdude and didn't work when I got it.

These are getting to be quite relics, its circa 2004....and getting harder to come by. Not sure if they'd ever be deemed 'collectable', but I figured I'd see what I could do with it....just because of all the years & travel stickers it has. Despite of their design flaws; crap caps and poor ventilation I've always thought these were neat little toaster boxes....so let the fun begin!

I think it had been sitting in a shed or basement for quite a while....it was filthy, had some sticky brown goop on the case, and had a musty smell about it...not a big deal, but I knew a good cleaning was going to be needed.....

...and here we go! Case open. The Vantec 'Vortex' is something I added instead of an optical...I'll get back to that shortly. The GPU is an ATI HD2400 Pro 512mb, not bad at all for this era of hardware....going to leave that alone.





Time to start taking it apart. It was missing 2 of the 4 feet, so I removed them all.





Getting ready to start cleaning it.....even if I can't make it work, it'll make a nice display piece in my office.





Someone partially recapped it....and the PSU had some bad caps in it. I finished recapping the motehrboard and recapped the power supply. I didn't take any pics of the power supply.



Now time to test it all.





Success!! I do not have any faster P4 CPU's left, I got rid of all the faster ones ages ago when they were actually worth something. THis is a Prescott 1mb cache model.... I'll run with this one until I encounter a faster one; if ever.



All cleaned & tested....and time to reassemble it.





Not too bad.....but it's crammed in there!





Now for the Vantec HDD holder... Nice way to get a little more air flowing through this thing.







All the old foot goop cleaned off and some new feet added.



Of course a butt shot.



Installing XP....I used the onboard Silicon Image 3512 controller; since it's SATA....otherwise I'd have been doomed to an IDE HDD....so I had to loose install a floppy long enough to load the driver for it....and of course a loose optical... Once the OS is alive, I can use the network or USB for the rest.



Buttoned up after the install.





...even a little Q3A... In 1024x768 with all the eye candy enabled, it flies! It will do the same in 1280x1024, but this crap monitor for some reason doesn't display this game right in this resolution. Any other monitor is fine. It does this with any/every system.



A BCN classic restored!!

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by Topcat

Kind of a special build, but not special enough for a thread of its own..... This Shuttle ST61 G4 SKT478 P4 system has been a BCN member whore.... If I have the history right, it originated with Kerijane many moons ago, was then passed onto Hondaman, then Ratdude.....and finally me. I don't know where it died.....but it never worked for Ratdude and didn't work when I got it.

I'll clarify the history. I'm sure there are other threads about it on here... but don't have time to dig them up. I'll post links if/when I have time later.

Kerijane acquired it a long time ago... and it was her first recap job ever (for a first recap, actually was pretty good!). But not being a Mac, she never used it much... and gave it to me. I added the ATI TV wonder card and the GPU (and the RAM)... but didn't use it all that much either, having moved on to other projects. Hondaman wanted a HTPC, so I gave it to him... and other than pulling the DVD burner I installed (which had yellowed badly), made no changes, and it probably failed on him where after it sat in his basement for years. Later on he was wanting to downsize his stash, and I rediscovered it when going through such. I reclaimed it, with the intention of giving it to you where I knew it'd get the attention it needed that I wasn't inspired to provide myself.

I take it the Prescott CPUs I included weren't compatible? Supposedly they may have been the only model in 478 that supports x64 (OEM-only, I didn't' have anything else 478 to try them on).

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

I take it the Prescott CPUs I included weren't compatible? Supposedly they may have been the only model in 478 that supports x64 (OEM-only, I didn't' have anything else 478 to try them on).

I could have sworn you said you forgot those...and I don't seem to have any SKT478 stuff here of unknown origins (every unused 478 CPU is in a bin of its own)....but I'll keep looking.

[Per Hansson]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

I'm sure there are other threads about it on here... but don't have time to dig them up. I'll post links if/when I have time later.

Tadaa: https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=6569
P.S: There are others, but you must search for "ST61*" or "ST61G4"

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by Topcat

I could have sworn you said you forgot those...and I don't seem to have any SKT478 stuff here of unknown origins (every unused 478 CPU is in a bin of its own)....but I'll keep looking.

I Thought I shoved them in the case?

Maybe I didn't... heck I dunno. On the road for work so I won't be able to work.

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

I Thought I shoved them in the case?

Maybe I didn't... heck I dunno. On the road for work so I won't be able to work.

No, there was nothing of the sort in there. No worries, have a safe trip!

[Topcat]

This was a drop-off yeaterday. Been sitting in a barn since about the turn of the century. It's custom-built based on the legendary super-7 board; the Asus P5A-B. This was the K6-2 & K6-3 lover's dream because of its overclocking abilities plus having an AGP; a rare combo at the time.

It's filthy, and smells.....not as bad as the 'goat barn rescue', but it definitely needed a cleaning....but first things first....lets see if anything even works at all.... Obviously the CDROM is bad.



It fired up and booted to WinME. It's a 233MMX with 64mb RAM.....agonizing with Millennium Edition! ...but this revealed the first problem... Video card is bad. I did snoop...a lot of rental agreements for houses on the drive....apparently this once belonged to a property manager/owner... Rents were cheap ~20yrs ago compared to today!!





After a few minutes, it froze..... Here's why. CPU fan completely frozen. It was so clogged with dust, the louvers in the aluminum were not visible. THis photo was taken after a blast from the air compressor.





CPU...



Replacement fan from the junk drawer...



Now for the bad GPU, which was a Cirrus Logic 1mb IIRC. Yea, this went to the scrap bin.



I added a Hercules Prophet 4000 64mb AGP GPU. I also pulled the 33.6 modem and added a NIC. Sound is a Yamaha PCI card, not sure what model....



4.3gb Seagate HDD is still good; as if by some miracle....not even any bad sectors! Installing Win2k. I'd have done NT.....but I was being lazy and didn't feel like tracking down the drivers for everything.... Win2k had embedded for all except the video, which I already had.



Now to clean it up and put it back together....



...and done!



Nice rescue if I do say so myself!

[Topcat]

...and here's another weird build... While this one will be super cool, as mine always are, I don't think this one is quite deserving of its own thread; no case modding or anything really radical going on with this.

This will be as per my usual; a dual CPU system....that will come out a little later....but for now, lets start with the house it'll live in.

The case is a black Chenbro SR209. I have used these before, they're fabulous to work with; for a budget-friendly mid-range to higher end build. This one was real budget-friendly, as it was a freebie dropped off to be recycled.



There was a problem though...the entire HDD cage was removed....which could obviously cause some issues.





Now for the cure for that.... These cases came with a removable internal HDD cage by default....but as an upgrade option, there were a couple removable SATA & SAS hotswap cages made. I found a new 2.5" SAS cage in the box for $30.....so I grabbed it....and here it is:







It uses minisas to minisas cables, which I have a bunch of.



The cavity where it goes....



Like a glove!!!!!







Closed up for now.



I still have to strip the old guts out of this and thoroughly clean the case, and debadge it of course.... The new guts will be my trademark 2-CPU and Supermicro. GPU is still not set in stone, I'll have to rummage and see what I've got around that would be befitting of this....so stay tuned!!

[Topcat]

Interrupting the above build for just a quickie one-day 'sleeper' build that I finally found the right core for......

The donor system for the core parts was a drop off a few weeks ago that honestly I didn't pay much attention to because of the poor condition of the case.....but it was time to do something with it..... So here it is:

Sadly, this case wasn't a bad one at one point....it was made of nice thick steel...but it had a hard life. Top all dented in and scratched down to the metal in many places.



USB & front panel audio connectors broken.



No, I didn't just have the side off it, the side is missing.



...but after full testing and an install of Mint 20.3, it's not a bad system. 2nd gen I5 @ 2.9GHz 8gb RAM.



That's far too nice to send to the scrapper, but in this case it is in unacceptable condition....so enter in the new house it will live in!!

Now for the donor case; an Inspiron 531S. I've always liked these cases by Dell. Well built & well laid out slimlines. These were made for a very short time. This one has some rather worthless old single core Sempron in it w/ 2gb RAM.....I couldn't give that away....but this case is quite nice.





Here's what I mean by well laid out. Everything is accessible; tool-less for basic servicing. I've always wanted to build something modern into one of these cases....today was the day!



Now time to strip the innards out.







...but here's the problem with these cases! The IO area is part of the case.....perhaps to most; a deal-breaker.....but this is me!!





After being carefully measured & marked, then masked off....you know what's next!!



Cut & test fitted with some random board & IO plate. Perfect fit!







The old piece...



Deburre.......well, you know....


Now time to debadge the case.....removed all the ID stickers, COA, and the service tag placard.





Now time to strip this junk case....



...that was easy! The motherboard is an Intel DH61CR.



Installed.





Now for a PSU with some teapo & crapxon caps.....visibly they were ok, but I don't trust 'em.... I only recapped the secondary.



Cured. I didn't replace the mains, they were still good....





Going together.







Damn, that turned out stellar! I haven't lost my touch!



I hate these intel heatsinks....but this one actually wasn't broken.....so I just left it alone.



Everything lit up and worked.



I used the 500gb HDD that I had already loaded Mint 20.3 on. Mint runs fine on an old slow spinner....but if I were to put 10 on it, it would get a SSD upgrade... Side buttoned up as well.



BCN from Waterfox 4.0.7.



The junk.....the board is good, but it's worthless....if I can't rehome it somewhere, it'll end up at the shredder. I'll bilk the PSU out of this case, it's good....but the rest will go into my case crusher.



....and that's that... Here's to a nifty little sleeper in one of Dell's better quality slimline cases!

The Chenbro build will now continue!

[Topcat]

Back to the Chenbro.....

The Intel server board removed. I put it in an anti-static bag and put it away. Too good to scrap....would make a great NAS or something along those lines.





Coming apart....





Power supply removed.



Test fitting the new innards....and the secret revealed. The motherboard is X8DAL-I w/ 2x X5672 @ 3.2 24gb RAM. These are the fastest Quadcores this board can run based on the TDP specified for it (nothing more than 95w).



Now for the power supply. This is a 350w 'poweman' PSU. With a +12v rail rated @ 16a, I don't think it's going to cut the mustard for this build. The +5v rail is rated @ 30a, which is strong. Modern stuff is 12v heavy. This PSU would be better suited for a retro build with older hardware that like hefty 5v rails.



...but what to replace it with....hmmmm How about a Supermicro PWS-903-PQ 900w PSU! This one will carry any load that this system can dish out!



Now for a little mod!! What fun would a build be if there wasn't a few!! Apparently there were 2 versions of this specific X8DAL-I (not talking about the X8DAL-3, that model has an onboard SAS controller)....most have this passive heatsink on the northbridge and a few had a smaller active heatsink/fan. The passive version, the northbridge gets miserably hot....like barely able to touch hot! These boards aren't known for them failing....but it still makes me nervous with them running so hot....so I remedied it.

The passive.



A couple of the needed actives from a junk board.



Now for the next problem....there's no plug on this version of the board....but the markings & passives are there....so easy fix.



Just pulled the plug from the scrap board.



Easy Peasy!!



Success! Buttered up with some fresh AS5.



Now to start putting this thing together.... The GPU for now is a GTX560 TI, It's period-specific for the system....but all I had on hand....I'd rather have done something faster....but this is all I have for now.





Connecting the backplane for the SAS.



Also pulled the floppy and replaced it with a card reader. This board does not have a floppy header.



Things tied up.



The other end of the miniSAS cables tied off out of the way....I thought I had another LSI 9260....but turns out it got used on something else.....so I've got to get another one.....which will cause a delay in completion of this.....



Front back on.





Fired up.





Booted to Hiren's......and life is good...just have to track down a SAS controller.



The conclusion to come.

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by Topcat

The other end of the miniSAS cables tied off out of the way....I thought I had another LSI 9260....but turns out it got used on something else.....so I've got to get another one.....which will cause a delay in completion of this.....

I have a spare LSI card if you have sourcing issues. An 8708 EM2. Needs a new batt I think? Not that these cards are hard to obtain usually... they used to be dirt cheap.

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

I have a spare LSI card if you have sourcing issues. An 8708 EM2. Needs a new batt I think? Not that these cards are hard to obtain usually... they used to be dirt cheap.

9260's are obtainable new-old-stock for not very much with new BBU's in them....but they're always from China....so they take a little bit to get here.

[Topcat]

Another interruption in the Chenbro build, since it's on hold pending a SAS controller.....

A portion of this post was copypasta'd from the cheap/free thread.

Today's dropoff was a Gateway ESX-500X, complete with tower, monitor, KB & mouse, and the manuals.



The GPU appears to be a LeadTek GeForce 6800 128mb. The heatsink on this thing is a solid copper monster!



It would not POST....this is why. Piece of junk power supply someone added. The brand name on it is "COLORSIT", I've never heard of it. The original obviously went bad, hence this....





Has an 'alienware-ish' look with the fold-up door....kind of neat actually.



The rest of it...



The motehrboard is bad, partially. Caps are ok. NIC doesn't work, and it's not stable for some reason. RAM and GPU have been tested in another board, they're fine. The board is an Intel OEM; 845G/GL with a P4 @ 2.66/533 in it. I'll do a freebie resto on this, I have an Intel D865GLC which works, full featured BIOS, has 2gb RAM + P4 3GHz/800 Prescott in it, and best of all it fits the IO area of this case. The IO area of this case is not removable.....and I just don't want to cut this one out..... The untrained eye would never know this isn't the original board anyway.....ohh, and it came with an upgraded Audigy sound card....

Everything below here is new info

...so here's the completion of this one... The seat of my pants wanted to make a hell of a sleeper out of this...cutting the IO area certainly would be little challenge and would look factory-done.... The reason I didn't is because of how complete this is; IE, the monitor, KB, mouse, and manuals & disks. I put this one back to as close to original as possible with only minor subtle upgrades. I wasn't even going to bother trying to track down a replacement for the motherboard, I had an Intel D865GLC that was a perfect match. Not to mention can take a little more RAM and supports 800FSB....and already had 2gb RAM and a 3GHz/800 Prescott in it.....so here we go!

Old board removed.



Replacement board in.





Now for a small mod. The original power supply is long dead & done.... The above-mentioned bad one is what was in it when I got it; which also failed. The original supply had some kind of latches on the body to hold it into place. If you look at this pic you can see them on the roof of the case behind the optical.



The problem this created was no 3rd party PSU would stay in place, there was nothing to fasten it to, no screw holes in the back of the case. The PSU that was in it was being held into place by a small chunk of wood between it and the optical drive; pinning it into place...clever I guess, but not up to my standards!



Easy enough to fix.....made a template of the screw hole pattern.....



Marked off on the case....



Drilled. Now the PSU now mounts like it's supposed to. Becase of clearance issues on the upper left screw, I only drilled 3 holes.... Three screws will be more than adequate.



Now time to light this thing.





Tidied up inside. I upgraded the HDD to a 160gb Velociraptor SATA from the original 80gb IDE.



Installing WinXP. Yea, that top drive is a DVD-RAM....



Up & running...and here you see it with all its original hardware, minus the speakers.....I can live without those. This is a 2002 timewarp, XP, office 2003, and tons of software that would have been on a system back at time....as well as some good games of the era.





I'm sure this isn't worth a whole lot....but it was fun to put together & revive! ...and at the end of all this, I have absolutely nothing in it.

[Topcat]

Finished the Chenbro build today....the controller got here Monday.

Installed and updated the firmware.



Now for the drive. A Sandisk Lightning, 800gb. Funny story....I bought a pair of these to finish another project. One of the two sent to me was bad. I contacted the company, and they replaced the bad one and were kind enough to send an extra for the inconvenience....nice of them for sure! ...but I had no immediate use for the spare, its been sitting on my desk for a while now....but here we go!!



In the Chenbro SAS tray.



Config'd as a single drive...obviously....



Installing S2K12.



...and done!



I still would like a better GPU; preferably a kickass quadro over this old 560ti.....but this is as good as it gets for now.... GPU prices are still astronomical!!