best cheap/free scores 1.1

[ChaosLegionnaire]

4 dashes can also just mean a problem starting or initialising the cpu or no cpu inserted. i have mobos with a bad cpu vrm section that dont output the right voltage required for the cpu thus the cpu doesnt start so the mobo just thinks i didnt insert a cpu and displays 4 dashes on the post card. check the cpu vrm section is outputting the right voltage and try to fix/replace the mosfets and/or the vrm controller ic. whats the issue that makes u think that it is the chipset that is focked instead?

[Dan81]

Welp, pretty sad news for the fully recapped VP6. Might likely be a dead chipset - bought a POST card off a regular client of mine - no codes, just 4 dashes. The working board (which is currently missing its 2nd CPU socket) does go thru codes properly.

[Topcat]

More 'trash'....guy dismantled a mining setup and here's all the hardware...

This box contains a motherboard with a Ryzen 5 1600. 1x 1070ti, 2x RX580 armor, 4x RX 5700 XT GPU's, and 2x unknown power supplies.



Box of cabling, 5x 120mm 120v AC fans....and another motherboard...



The second motherboard. Has a 9th gen I7 @ 3.7GHz (forgot the number) and 16gb RAM





Everything I've checked so far has been good.

[Dan81]

Samsung K4D263238E-GC2A RAM on the 9800SE AIW. I figured it's RAM since pressing the GPU had no effect, but pressing the RAM chips would change the artefacts.

As for cooling, I meant the RAM chips. The GPU heatsink will have to stay as it is... most I've tried (including the Evercool Turbo II) interfere with the TV tuner.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

IIRC the HUEG cooler that was on one of the 9600 Pro cards (a Club3D/Powercolor OEM'd one) is a Evercool Turbo II, which is sort of a clone to the Revoltec VGA Graphic Freezer.

ah thanks. its looks like a zalman vf950 but with bigger and longer heatsink fins but not as many heatpipes and half the number of heatpipes as on the zalman vf1000. should cool gpus decently at around 75w tdp.

It uses Hynix RAM which feels like quality to me.

yea korean vram from hynix and samsung are considered top tier or tier one vram. samsung vram tends to have more consistent asic quality and binning in their chips but unfortunately, "consistent" also means not very overclockable or overclocking doesnt seem to scale with temperature, so i typically run samsung vram chips bare and dont bother putting ramsinks on them.

hynix on the other hand tend to have more variance in their asic quality so depending on your luck, u may get bum vram chips that dont oc well or u'll get good asic quality chips that overclock well and can also scale with temperature if u put copper ramsinks on them.

And for the "crown jewel"... a 9800SE AIW that required a reflow on the RAM chips. It surprised me since I used to remember the failure point of those cards being... the shim over the GPU itself. It surprised me to find out the RAM chips were at fault with this one

how u managed to figure out it was the ram chips is beyond me?! i too would have given it up if the gpu refused to work no matter how much i reflowed it. lol... what brand of ram chips is on there anyway? i know they typically use samsung or hynix vram but sometimes they used infineon on the lower end cards like on the 9500 series, 9700 non-pro and 9800se or some no-name generic brand of video mem on there.

I'm uncertain whether to run it as it is or just go ahead and add some RAM heatsinks. It's been repasted with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut for that matter so I won't have any remorses in using less-than-ideal thermal solutions.

try the arctic vga silencer rev 2 or 3 if u have one. thats about the only third party cooler i've heard of that will fit and work on the aiw 9700/9800 cards.

[Dan81]

IIRC the HUEG cooler that was on one of the 9600 Pro cards (a Club3D/Powercolor OEM'd one) is a Evercool Turbo II, which is sort of a clone to the Revoltec VGA Graphic Freezer. I already stuck that huge mofo over a R300 based Medion 9600TX (which is just a souped up 9500 Pro that prolly can be unlocked into a 9700 Pro if I'm lucky?) that had a rather dinky cooler.

As far as the Mobility 9700 goes - that thing can likely run at 9600XT so I'll probably mod it as such. It uses Hynix RAM which feels like quality to me.

And for the "crown jewel"... a 9800SE AIW that required a reflow on the RAM chips. It surprised me since I used to remember the failure point of those cards being... the shim over the GPU itself. It surprised me to find out the RAM chips were at fault with this one - methinks either it had a pretty nasty shock that caused solder balls to go awry... or the amount they heat up to was what caused the artefacts. It works absolutely fine after I did the reflow (I have zero access to anyone with a reball solution, aside from the expensive pricks that claim "it's not worth it".) though I'm uncertain whether to run it as it is or just go ahead and add some RAM heatsinks. It's been repasted with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut for that matter so I won't have any remorses in using less-than-ideal thermal solutions. Worked well on my Soltek SL-75FRN2-RL "Golden Flame" + Athlon XP-M 2600+ (yes, I run a mobile Barton in there lol) and I think it even passed 3DMark01 with no issues - didn't push it too far w/ 03 out of fear of not breaking it worse than it was.

btw, the stock heatsink on that X1950XTX does a pretty good job at keeping it cool - I have yet to see any other cooler that can fit that card which would keep up w/ it.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

I've been dormant for quite some time here... but nuff'. I'm back.

Mobos:
- ASUS P5P800 + Pentium 4 631
- ASRock 775i65PE + Pentium D 925 - a bit of wasted potential due to 865PE max RAM limit being 3.5GB.
- ASRock P4i65G + Prescott HT 3GHz

damn how do u always get the good stuff?! really nice p4 stuff u got there!

- Radeon 9600 Pro - quite the bunch of those, with one having a cooler that would better suit a R300/R350 card at the very least, than a 9600.

what cooler was that? might be a custom third party cooler? or was it the stock cooler? the radeon 9600 series ran pretty cool so the stock heatsink works fine for it. cant say the same for the radeon 9700/9800 cards. pretty surprised the entire 9500/9600/9700/9800 line used more or less the same type of single slot cooler...

- Radeon X1950XTX - the only way I got this thing to work without artefacting was LITERALLY sticking a copper penny inbetween the GPU core and the heatsink. The most ghetto solution one can possibly think - especially since it passed Furmark and several 3dMark versions (2001, 2003 and 2005) without breaking a sweat.

ah~ the classic "shim higher than the die" problem on many ati gpus strikes again... why ati keeps doing this is pretty mind boggling. their high end gpus that had this shim installed on the substrate all had pretty large dies. therefore, its unlikely the die would crack. this more like smells of planned obsolescence to me...

but other than that, its a great gpu! its the top end gpu of the x1000 series. should have no problems running all games of that era in full hd res or uxga res if u're still stuck on a 4:3 monitor. should treat it well by replacing the stock heatsink with a better one to make it last!

- Radeon Mobility 9700 - disguised as a 9600 Pro AGP.

yea haha! that fooled a number of people all right who didnt do their research before buying. the mobile product naming scheme is not the same as the desktop product naming scheme, so the mobility radeon 9700 used the rv360 gpu found on the desktop radeon 9600 xt. the mobility radeon 9800 used a heavily downclocked and half-crippled r420 gpu used on the desktop radeon x800 series.

- Radeon 9250s - quite a lot of 'em too

yea im sure momaka would love to have a pick at all those 9250 cards as it was his first video card many years ago when he was a lad.

[Topcat]

I've been dormant for quite some time here... but nuff'. I'm back.


- 2x ABIT VP6 - only one works... the other won't even beep. The one that works needs a full recap, of course. A nice surprise during the POST sequence, which is apparently present on both BIOS chips
- Micronics MC10513653 w/ Intel 486 DX4 100MHz - as much as I love seeing this board... the BIOS on it is horribly spartan - to the point I was unable to get a Quantum Fireball 635AT from a Compaq (judging by the "Replace with Compaq spare sticker) running, because it would NOT let me input the HDD settings manually. An upside is that it uses a RTC module and not some yucky Varta BS battery. I'll try and test the other cards separately on my Aquaris 4D50NR, to see how far am I going to get with it

Enjoy! Glad they finally got there!

[TechGeek]

The Micronics board that I've got also has a seriously barebones BIOS. And if yours is anything like mine, it has completely nonfunctional extended/translated CHS routines, and you'll have to use an add-in boot ROM (say, installed on a network card) that patches in its own Int13h routines that actually have working translated CHS routines.

[Dan81]

I've been dormant for quite some time here... but nuff'. I'm back.

Mobos:
- ECS P6STP-FL + VIA C3 Ezra
- ASUS P5P800 + Pentium 4 631
- QDI KinetiZ 7B + Duron 1000
- FIC P4M-RS350 + Celeron D 331 - Medion OEM
- ASUS M4N68T-M + Athlon II X2 250 - one of the few solid Geforce 7025 mobos I own, besides Gigabyte's M68MT-S2P Rev3.1
- ASRock 775i65PE + Pentium D 925 - a bit of wasted potential due to 865PE max RAM limit being 3.5GB.
- EpoX EP-8HDA5I + Athlon 64 3000 s754
- Fujitsu Siemens D1107 system board
- ASRock P4i65G + Prescott HT 3GHz
- MSI GF6150-P33 + Sempron 145 (the "why does this even exist" combo... Geforce 6150 should tell you enough.)
- Intel DH61CR + i5 2300
- Shuttle (ECS OEM) MK40V + Athlon XP 2200+ - this is proof Shuttle could fix up ECS and PCChips' screwups, and that's saying something.
- Lenovo G41 mobo + E5700
- 2x ABIT VP6 - only one works... the other won't even beep. The one that works needs a full recap, of course. A nice surprise during the POST sequence, which is apparently present on both BIOS chips
- Micronics MC10513653 w/ Intel 486 DX4 100MHz - as much as I love seeing this board... the BIOS on it is horribly spartan - to the point I was unable to get a Quantum Fireball 635AT from a Compaq (judging by the "Replace with Compaq spare sticker) running, because it would NOT let me input the HDD settings manually. An upside is that it uses a RTC module and not some yucky Varta BS battery. I'll try and test the other cards separately on my Aquaris 4D50NR, to see how far am I going to get with it

With this, we move on to GPUs:

- Radeon 9600 Pro - quite the bunch of those, with one having a cooler that would better suit a R300/R350 card at the very least, than a 9600.
- GTX 275 - dead, unfortunately. Does not complete POST but does get detected.
- Radeon X1950XTX - the only way I got this thing to work without artefacting was LITERALLY sticking a copper penny inbetween the GPU core and the heatsink. The most ghetto solution one can possibly think - especially since it passed Furmark and several 3dMark versions (2001, 2003 and 2005) without breaking a sweat.
- Radeon R7 370 4GB - roachfest... has had a few missing SMDs I've soldered back. Untested as of this post.
- Palit DAYTONA Geforce 4 MX440 64MB - golden PCB, Winbond RAM
- Radeon Mobility 9700 - disguised as a 9600 Pro AGP.
- Radeon 9250s - quite a lot of 'em too
- S3 Savage 4 AGP - Diamond Multimedia OEM

Finally, one of the other prized finds, a Xenon revision Xbox 360, complete in box, with old Blades dashboard from 2008 - 2.0.6717.

[Xenon-Codex]

Philips tuner from the better era (taken from the dump), and two spare antenna amplifiers from a real recycling company. They sell (or give free) usable stuff like the law says.

[Xenon-Codex]

This rack-pc was goingto the trash. Don't know yet if itäs working. Looks like 350MHz P2 with 64MB of Ram.

[Dan81]

Today's scores:

- custom built 775 w/ P35-DS3 (rev1.0, yay), Geforce GT320 1GB DDR3 (PCPartner/Sapphire OEM, GT215 core), 500GB Seagate Pipeline HDD (ew, why.), C2D E8400, 2x2GB DDR2
- ASUS P5QL Pro w/ E7300 - dead, burnt PCB near one of the USB headers. CPU untested.
- Quadro4 750 XGL - dead, GPU quite literally fused with heatsink and got ripped off when removing the heatsink
- Winfast A340 - kinda dead? No POST on my ABIT NF7, have yet to test on other mobos.
- Kobian N620 - Riva TNT2 M64 32MB - works fine
- bunch of random RAM sticks
- eVGA 8600GT - surprisingly the only GPU among the other two (Quadro and A340) to POST but has missing SMDs so it only runs on x8 slots. No artefacts, which is surprising for a G84 card
- Xbox 360 Zephyr - works, repasted and recased into Elite shell

[Topcat]

Man, I wish I'd find a K7S6A these days. Their K7S5A is already a goldmine in itself

I ebay'd one of those a year or so ago....boggled my mind why it went for so much...

I remember gazillions of ECS nForce boards back around 2005 with bad chipsets.... Had an arcade owner client that would send me boxes of these at a time with bad caps. The survival/success rate was under 50%.

[Dan81]

Ya got me sold on ECS. For whatever reason their OST caps held right up there with Ruby MBZ and Panasonic FL/FJ/FR.
Not counting the pre-Teapo merger G-Luxon riddled models which required recaps almost always.

Man, I wish I'd find a K7S6A these days. Their K7S5A is already a goldmine in itself

[dmill89]

ECS boards are often used in industrial applications, they can build good stuff.
a lot of arcade equipment has ECS mobo's in them.

X2, I've had good luck with even of their "consumer grade" boards. They may have had a higher than average DOA/early failure rate "back in the day" (not sure if any actual stats support that, or if it was just forum hear-say), but if they were good to begin with, they seem to hold up fairly well. I've got several 15-20 year old ECS boards that still work fine, even with their original OST caps which while not the best still seem to hold up better than the "plague-era" Chemi-Con KZG/KZJ or Nichicon HM/HN with the "bad" production dates (I've seen many supposedly "better" boards from this era failed due to bad KJG/KZJ or HM/HN caps).

[stj]

ECS boards are often used in industrial applications, they can build good stuff.
a lot of arcade equipment has ECS mobo's in them.

[Dan81]

Trashpicked this a few days ago:

- ECS K7VTA3/333
- K-Mex PX-450 PSU
- 160GB WDC HDD
- Sparkle Riva TNT2 M64 32MB
- 256MB DDR333
- Athlon XP 1700+
- Realtek RTL8139C+ NIC

Surprisingly used for topography purposes. The ECS mobo doesn't seem shabby at all, given LITE-ON of all people rebranded it!

[Topcat]

Got these the other day, 2x HPE Proliant Servers....a DL360 and a DL380 GEN9's.

The DL360 1U



DL380 2U



Updated the firmwares on both....which is a real treat in itself if you don't have a HPE 'service contract'....but I found the binaries.



Considering the DL360 1U for a NVR replacement....wanted to see how it would behave with a real GPU (has a 16x slot)....but sometimes servers and expansion GPU's don't play nice...but these you can disable the onboard. The NVR software doesn't require mega GPU power, but it would need more than the onboard turd (G200) could provide. Tested with a Quadro K620.



Perfect!




Now for the alpha testing of the DL380. I've been wanting to upgrade to a more efficient NAS; the DL380 would be a great one. I've also wanted to retire the dual motherboard case NAS I've been using and do a full rack build for all servers & network gear.... Hint: That fully enclosed beige rack that ratdude dropped by with....but anyway;

Server 2016 installed. I used a 128mb micro SD card to load the OS to.... Works, but it's a bit laggy compared to a SAS SSD in the SAS cage. One drawback of the 2.5" SAS cage, there's no large drives in that form factor....and anything 2TB+ is stupid expensive....so it's bunches of 1.2TB's in a RAID5 if you want large capacity....but it can be done!!




Both of these are dual skt2011 suppoting E5-2600 v3 & v4 CPU's; DDR4 RAM.

[jiroy]

Been busy like ever last weeks , repairing 7 I7 Desktops for one of my clients . When he offered as gratitude for me 5 Dual Cpus intel Xeon desktops , cause he thinks they're outdated , was too exhausted to even give an answer

Maybe when i have more spare time ..