Topcat's Other Misc Weird Build Thread

[Topcat]

Finished up the Gateway server sleeper today. Not as much of a sleeper as I wanted it to be, it was doomed to period-specific hardware because of the SCA backplane....but it turned out pretty darn nice IMO.

Tied up the wiring.....



Buttoned up and XP installed...





Only one hiccup, the Adaptec 2120S RAID controller ended up being bad. Kept getting timeout errors and drives dropping out of the array. Replaced drives, thinking they were the culprits, but the issues continued on all drives on all bays. I pulled that and stuck an Adaptec 29160 64-bit card in its place with a single Cheetah 147gb 15K U160. No more issues. The crystaldisk results are pretty good for hardware of this era, this is where the 15,000 RPM really shines.

Specs:

Supermicro P4DCE+
2x Prestonia core Xeons @ 3GHz
2GB RDRAM
ATI X1600 Pro 512mb
Adaptec 29160 64-bit SCSI controller
All housed in a Gateway 2000 930 chassis

Q3A played silky smooth in 1600x1200 with everything on.

[Topcat]

This was the leftover system after I snatched the Tableau Forensic bridge out of it for my data recovery station......so now to have some fun with it...............excuse the wire mess...it's all cobbled together in test form powered by my bench supply.

[Topcat]

The final results of the above Coolermaster setup....

I won't go into all the gore....but here's the power distribution & switching controller for the lighting that allows the front panel on/off switch to be used. The wiring & connectors were harvested from junk TV's.



Enclosed in a black box under the drive trays. The shell was an old power brick that I stripped out and repurposed.




Still as difficult as ever to photograph....





Lights off by the front panel switch....



Lights on....



Ok, not really a big deal....but this was pretty much an orphan system I had no use for....I snatched what I wanted from it....so why not have a little fun!!

[Topcat]

Next build I'm kind of excited about. It was a drop off for recycling. Dell XPS 630i. These are slightly on the rare side....but this one was a little more unusual; as it's the red-faced one and also the liquid cooled version as well....I didn't even know the liquid cooler was an option with them. The GPU was missing and the PSU has bad caps....so it didn't work. Not sure what GPU it had....there were a quite a few GPU options with these, the best one being a GTX285; which probably won't be hard to find.

Testing the motherboard in the oven:



Don't pay any attention to the CPU. I pulled the 9650 out so I could use it elsewhere. I just stuck something in here to test the board....as the first test is 8gb RAM support. It should support 8gb....but lots of internet scuttlebutt says it won't (no POST and beeps errors)....well, not sure what others ran into, but 8gb ran fine for me. I'll let memtest run for a while to be sure, but thus far no issues!!





The liquid cooler.....



Next will be a 5400-series Xeon test. I don't have any spares laying around that are modified for a LGA775, so I've got one coming. Going for an X5470 3.33GHz quad core. Wasn't going to waste my time on a 5450; as that's the same as the C2Q 9650 that I just pulled out.....no gains at all....so if it's going to be done, it's going to be done for some gain....but so far so good!

[Dan81]

nForce 650i... now that's a interesting challenge. Weren't those known to have FSB holes?

[Topcat]

nForce 650i... now that's a interesting challenge. Weren't those known to have FSB holes?

FSB holes>? What's that?

I found a pair of GTX 285's for peanuts....so I guess that cat is out of the bag!!

[Dan81]

Yeah. A simple explanation: it may not POST at a range of FSBs (let's use 390-401 as example) but will work at the first FSB digit outside that range. (like 389 or 402). nForce 600 and 700 were fairly notorious of this issue.

As long as the XPS doesn't allow FSBs outside the standard speeds (e.g 333, 667, 800, 1066, 1333, 1600, and I think 1866 as well?) you'll likely be fine. It's only OC-ing that is a pain on those.

[Topcat]

Yeah. A simple explanation: it may not POST at a range of FSBs (let's use 390-401 as example) but will work at the first FSB digit outside that range. (like 389 or 402). nForce 600 and 700 were fairly notorious of this issue.

As long as the XPS doesn't allow FSBs outside the standard speeds (e.g 333, 667, 800, 1066, 1333, 1600, and I think 1866 as well?) you'll likely be fine. It's only OC-ing that is a pain on those.

Ok, thanks for the info. I don't plan on any overclocking....this one is more of a resto with a Xeon CPU mod; I won't overclock it.

[Dan81]

Yeah, then you'll likely be fine. I can see it has active cooling on the northbridge so that's good - these nVidia chipsets were really crispy.
(not that their AMD counterparts were any less cooler )

[Dan81]

Speaking of weird builds... I felt like torturing a old Northwood HT today. Netburst deserves no mercy



Northwood HT 2.8, 1TB Hitachi Ultrastar I had around (7200 RPM, nothing special), HD4870 1GB, 2x512MB DDR400, SATA ODD. All running XP, powered by ASRock's funky P4Dual-915GL mobo.

There's no way the CPU would keep up with the 4870 lol

[Topcat]

Speaking of weird builds... I felt like torturing a old Northwood HT today. Netburst deserves no mercy



Northwood HT 2.8, 1TB Hitachi Ultrastar I had around (7200 RPM, nothing special), HD4870 1GB, 2x512MB DDR400, SATA ODD. All running XP, powered by ASRock's funky P4Dual-915GL mobo.

There's no way the CPU would keep up with the 4870 lol

Nice. Someone dropped off a Dimension 8250 system a while back. Supports Northwoods (533FSB max) and RDRAM. I haven't done anything with it yet....but I didn't send it to the R2 scrappers either.

[Dan81]

I think I had a chap locally that bought all 4 of my RDRAM sticks. I couldn't find a cheap RDRAM board and honestly didn't really like it either... cooling them down didn't seem like an easy task.

For me it's either PC133 SDR (dunno why most people ran away from 845 SDR - it's an rather okay-ish and cheap alternative to Tualatin IMO) or DDR. Especially with the 820's flop, I'm pretty confident of staying away from RDRAM.

[TechGeek]

My Dell Precision 220 has 512MB of RDRAM. Pretty zippy for what it was back then.

[Topcat]

RDRAM performed very well at the time versus PC100/133 and early DDR1 in the 400/533fsb P4 period....just a short-lived era; as Intel hosed RAMBUS over (or visa versa) with the very over-priced memory. RDRAM era hardware gets more rare every day. Love it or hate it, it has a place in the PC retro kingdom.

[Topcat]

CPU came the other day for this.....now we're cookin'!! I didn't even have to hack up hte BIOS to make this work....Dell quietly had the microcode in their BIOS for Xeons. Unusual for Dell...but perhaps done because it was their 'higher end' machine. Tested using air cooling.



Now to test the liquid cooler.



Some AS5 on the CPU.



In the oven. This was an interesting setup for testing outside of its intended environment.



...and memtesting away... Under this load, it was holding @ ~46*C, good for this CPU. Ambient temp in the room was about 85*F. These CPU's (X5470) are hot-running to begin with.


The lid wouldn't shut with the radiator shroud in there....



Now to clean this up and then ready to move onto the case.....




More later.

[Topcat]

Yeah. A simple explanation: it may not POST at a range of FSBs (let's use 390-401 as example) but will work at the first FSB digit outside that range. (like 389 or 402). nForce 600 and 700 were fairly notorious of this issue.

As long as the XPS doesn't allow FSBs outside the standard speeds (e.g 333, 667, 800, 1066, 1333, 1600, and I think 1866 as well?) you'll likely be fine. It's only OC-ing that is a pain on those.

You weren't joking about that chipset being a little on the fickle side.... I've read horror stories about running more than 4gb RAM in it.... I got a couple BSoD's with memory-related errors. The modules are good and nothing is overclocked. It wasn't a big deal, only happened a couple times after days of abuse....usually happens at boot.

Anyway..... Here's to a beautiful restoration of an XPS 630i. I absolutely love these cases, so pleasant to work with, they breathe very well, and they just have a great look.

This one was filthy....and taking these apart is a chore.







Down to the bones....




Parts.



It was skuzzy enough it had to be washed. It was cold that day, so I made due with the sink instead of taking it outside and using the hose.



Everything washed....and going back together.






Repasted the NB chip after cleaning the board & Heatsink.



Power supply recapped & reinstalled.



Motherboard reinstalled with the liquid cooler.




GPU's installed.



...and away we go!!



That cleverly placed lighting....



SLI baby!



Some quick load testing & temp checking. These CPU's run miserably hot to begin with, so these temps weren't bad versus air cooling... It was still a bit warm under load but nothing to get excited about.

No load:



CPU-Z stress test loads:



...and done!!



The specs:

Dell XPS 630i
CPU: Xeon X5470 quad core @ 3.33GHz
RAM: 8GB DDR2
GPU: 2x GTX285 in SLI
120GB SSD w/ win7 pro
750W Dell PSU. Still don't know who makes these....but they're well built and very solid.

I'd like to stumble upon one more of these cases and mod it with a window with modern guts.... There's a couple of these on fleabay.....but priced more than I'd go for it to possibly be butchered....but this one is wrapped up. Nice addition to the restored retro fleet.

[sam_sam_sam]

Very nice restoration on this computer

[Topcat]

I'd like to stumble upon one more of these cases and mod it with a window with modern guts....

Ask and ye shall receive. Had another red bezel XPS 630i dropped off last week (same customer that dropped off the other one). PSU bad; heard something *snap* in it when I plugged it in, no powerup and no STBY. I was not able to identify what snapped. Fuse good....all sink'd transistors good (not shorted at least, no smoke, no stink, nothing visibly burnt). Not going waste much more time on it, they can be had all day long for ~$30. This case can also take a standard ATX PSU....but anyway, retested the board with another PSU, and it works....but I'm not going to restore this one to original condition. This one did not come with the liquid cooler....and I can't seem to find another one.... Just going to store it away until I figure out what I want to do with it. Case is in fabulous condition, just the usual dirty for something approaching 20yrs old.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Post testing, as I'm having unexpected restrictions! (Issues with board software) (Firefox 127.0.2)

[Topcat]

We interrupt your regularly scheduled build to show off Topcat's completely pimped out Precision T7910.

Yes, I know I'm a terrible former BCN owner; I don't post much now nor keep these thread going.....but I'll throw you guys a bone with this one. It's Topcat's mega pimp T7910 now, I finally tracked down a couple of the liquid coolers that were optional from Dell for these. Not an easy feat....and I actually got them cheap. I'm not sure how many of our OG's are still here that really care about my goofy builds anymore.






Made by Asetek; and their weird locking collars.



Installing them was a treat. RAM air guides and the RAM had to be removed. Yes, I did upgrade the CPU's to something that'd be a little more befitting of liquid cooling!



Installed finally.



Here we are!!



Now for some more fun! These coolers blow air from their bases outward to the case side, not AFT like the air coolers. There's a special vented side made for these cases that had the liquid cooled option. They are available but expensive. They cost $100, which is more than I even paid for the coolers!! I refused to pay that much for a piece of stamped sheet metal with a handle in it.....so now I really get to make it mine!! 🙈

If I'm going to butcher the side panel, might as well make it count!! Add some active airflow!



Checking clearances, and no problem. These are 20mm fans, not 25mm. However, 25mm would have cleared none the less. Ironically enough, these fans were rear exhaust fans I saved from a bunch of Optiplex 390SFF systems I scrapped.



Peeled the sticker off; no saving it.



Here was the only expense associated with this mod. $13 shipped for 5x 80mm fan grills with covers. I only needed 3, so I have 2 left.



Laid out with the spacing I wanted.



Everything marked.



First was to drill the holes.



...and the cutting begins!! Thanks to the thin crappy metal all the 'big box' systems use now, it was easy to cut with my dremel.



All 3 cut, deburred, and cleaned up.



Mounting the fans up....





Covers installed. These fans are exhausts, I didn't use the filter material....there's really no need for exhaling fans.



Now to wire this into the system. These are 3-wire fans @ 12v. Pretty loud. There are no unused fan headers on the motherboard, so I simply powered them off the 5v rail. They're probably running @ ~1500RPM. Move plenty of air and quiet. Considering the Dell solution didn't even have active cooling, it's a win!



Easy peasy!!





...and done!!





Ohh, and it dual boots to Linux....which anymore is my go-to OS. I've just really had my fill of what Windows has become these days.



This pimp-a-liscious T7910 now has every option available to it!!

Precision T7910
2x Xeon E5-2687W v4 @ 3GHz x12 cores per CPU. 24 cores 48 threads
128GB ECC DDR4
2x Quadro K5200 8GB GPU's in SLI; 16gb dedicated video RAM
1TB M.2 boot storage
12G SAS adapter w/ 8 bays for storage expansion
Linux Mint 22 & Win10 Enterprise