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Hack: MPC Clientpro 424 GPU upgrade

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    Hack: MPC Clientpro 424 GPU upgrade

    Awhile back I scored a clientpro 424 for peanuts:

    https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...&postcount=696

    but even with the RAM maxed to 2GB it's a bit of a dog... intel graphics seem to be the bottleneck (it runs 7 with SLIC'd BIOS)

    I opened it up to find that despite that all of the GPU parts are there minus the GPU. Heatsink, fan, and all (no thermal pads, but I have some sheet stock I can cut from).

    what came out was this:





    (ignore the crap in the background, yes IK my desk is a mess)

    the chipset heatsink also had similar contacts for lower RAM chips.

    sadly these units are rare and "identical" GPU modules nearly impossible to obtain and they're pretty pricey (like $90 out of Taiwan).

    The mod:

    http://www.ebay.com/itm/400761557640

    IMHO it's not bad for $30... it's a Quadro FX 770 aka a OpenGL optimized Geforce 9600. 512mb too. a far cry from the 256MB ATI x1600's it was designed for.

    It's a mod because I'll have to remove the 4 studs that used to hold the HP heatsink... nothing I can't do as they're usually press fit with a back bracket which I bet I could remove without too much trouble. I once removed some pressed studs from some socket 604 coolers (Ratdude's main rig V2) so IIRC some careful punch work will do the trick.

    Once removed, all I should have to do is cut new thermal pads and AS5 the die... and screw it on to the heatsink.

    To check before I purchased, I scaled the image to the dimensions of the dummy and HS and then compared them... the holes match up allright.

    My svideo out probably won't work after this but honestly, who gives a shit?

    Wish me luck...

    PS- before somebody screams "BIOS WHITELIST!!!", the bios was cool with me cheating in a spare intel 5100 A/G/N card into the TV tuner's mini PCIe slot /o any complaints... it's basically a desktop BIOS as far as I can tell.
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    #2
    Re: Hack: MPC Clientpro 424 GPU upgrade

    meh, why not resurrect an unnoticed thread...
    i got an HP thin client with an AMD geode NX 1500 1.0ghz, 2gb ram, Desktop BIOS (even PXE), and truly crap onboard audio. it didnt have SATA but instead an IDE 26mb SSD.

    i replaced the SSD with a 10gb spinner, added an audio card, added a SATA raid card into the mix, and it is now the audio server for my AM transmitter.

    it has 2x2tb in RAID 1 for data, a $30 audio card, 10Gb IDE laptop drive for the OS, and is sitting in my crawl space. its running openSUSE 13.1, the music player is called MOCP, and the system management is all done over SSH using YaST, file uploads are using Samba. the broadcaster is just the usual "talking house" system.
    the hostname? dubstep-broadcast.
    Last edited by goontron; 10-10-2014, 11:09 AM.
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      #3
      Re: Hack: MPC Clientpro 424 GPU upgrade

      FYI the mod was a fail... BEEP BEEP BEEP says the bios...
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        #4
        Re: Hack: MPC Clientpro 424 GPU upgrade

        Originally posted by ratdude747 View Post
        BEEP BEEP BEEP says the bios...
        Maybe a missing SMD component or a bad connector on the card.....
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          #5
          Re: Hack: MPC Clientpro 424 GPU upgrade

          Originally posted by RJARRRPCGP View Post
          Maybe a missing SMD component or a bad connector on the card.....
          Yeah, IDK, the thing is cool but sorta slow (a waste of a pentium D IMHO)... I'll recheck the card. I wish I had a good way to test (short of swapping it for the similar card in my asus x83V).
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            #6
            Re: Hack: MPC Clientpro 424 GPU upgrade

            Originally posted by ratdude747 View Post
            Yeah, IDK, the thing is cool but sorta slow (a waste of a pentium D IMHO)... I'll recheck the card. I wish I had a good way to test (short of swapping it for the similar card in my asus x83V).
            What Pentium D does it have?

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              #7
              Re: Hack: MPC Clientpro 424 GPU upgrade

              2.8GHz, EMT64 capable (beyond that I'd have to check). Obviously Socket 775.
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                #8
                Re: Hack: MPC Clientpro 424 GPU upgrade

                Originally posted by ratdude747 View Post
                2.8GHz, EMT64 capable (beyond that I'd have to check). Obviously Socket 775.
                That is why it runs like shit not the video. I do a lot of socket 775 Pentium D stuff still and nothing under the 3.4 goes in them. It is night and day between a 2.8 and 3.4 Pentium D on these older machines.

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                  #9
                  Re: Hack: MPC Clientpro 424 GPU upgrade

                  Originally posted by brethin View Post
                  That is why it runs like shit not the video. I do a lot of socket 775 Pentium D stuff still and nothing under the 3.4 goes in them. It is night and day between a 2.8 and 3.4 Pentium D on these older machines.
                  Probably, but still for something not a laptop integrated video is kinda sucky IMHO.
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