Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Just an honorable mention for a little sleeper system....this *was* a P3 system at birth.....lame.... Ok, take a Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L motherboard that came in a junk box....a C2Q Q9650 that came out of a bad Intel DG45FC....4gb of RAM from the BIN....and a GeForce 9800GT....then put it into a heavy-gauge steel mint condition Pavilion 7940 case, and you get a nifty sleeper system.

I removed all the goofy stickers, added a card reader & working optical, and gave it a good cleaning....







Ok, kind of boring and not worthy of it's own thread....but hey, it didn't go to the shredder! OS is Server 2012 R2. This post created from it....

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Here's another goofy one....this is that beige Medion P4 system that was given to me ages ago. I did my yellowing removal on it last year, and it brightened up a lot, but wasn't perfect.... I just couldn't decide what to put in it, so I just did a full restoration of it's original hardware. It had some unusual features for its time, inspite of it only being a 400FSB P4. Mainly the GeForce 3 Ti GPU and its goofy v.92 56K modem & firewire combo card. Anyway, after replacing the missing PSU and recapping the motherboard, it's alive. It supports 2gb RAM with 2 SDRAM slots....but it doesn't like ECC modules, and I don't have any 1gb non-ECC modules on hand, so it only has 1GB ram in the form of 2x 512mb DIMM's at the moment. I also upgraded the CPU to the almost fastest 400fsb Northwood I could find, which is a 2.8GHz. There was a 3GHz 400FSB, but lots of luck ever finding one...so 2.8GHz it is.

I added a few external extras, replacing the non-working mitsumi cdrom with a DVDRW drive and a Lian Li mobile rack for the HDD.





The PSU and HDD were missing when I got it, so I tossed in a rebuilt Allied I had on hand. HDD is a 30gb 7200 RPM Maxtor.



Up & running:



All buttoned up.


Of course this post created from it running XP SP3. I'll keep my eyes peeled for some 1gb non-ECC SDRAM modules for it....They're out there but ~$30ea. I don't think this relic is worth $60 for the modules, so I'll wait for some less expensive ones to turn up....but otherwise, this one is done....and added to this useless build thread.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

Looks like the motherboard can't support 32nm chips, period.

Probably. After googling a little, it seems this board has a history of not liking various CPU's. Not that it matters in the case of this build....just tossing things at it I have on hand...it'll end up in the 'for sale' fleet someday. It'll be a good daily use system for someone.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

This one went together ok.... I tried testing the Pegatron IPMTB-TK used in this build with the W3690 I scored, it recognized it as a W3580.... It also seemed to not like higher speed Westmere CPU's. It had no problem with the Nehalem Xeons I tried though, so I just ran with one of those (e5520) and called it a day....I wasn't going to waste the w3690 on this build anyway....I have an X8SAX that wants it.

Looks like the motherboard can't support 32nm chips, period.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

This one went together ok.... I tried testing the Pegatron IPMTB-TK used in this build with the W3690 I scored, it recognized it as a W3580.... It also seemed to not like higher speed Westmere CPU's. It had no problem with the Nehalem Xeons I tried though, so I just ran with one of those (e5520) and called it a day....I wasn't going to waste the w3690 on this build anyway....I have an X8SAX that wants it.

It's alive and well, running Win7 since it's SLIC'd.



I'll post the rest of the pics tomorrow.

[Topcat]

I've got a few sleeper builds & other strange builds on the horizon.....but not builds special enough for dedicated threads....so this thread will serve as my log for what I consider unusual, but not extraordinary...

...and to kick it off....some lenovo desktop with a bad motherboard... PSU is external...but with some trickery, I can get a slimline PSU in it....so a worthless system gets reborn in my weird way! The only reason I'd consider reviving this case, it's in absolute mint condition!



I've got something cool to shoehorn into this one!