best cheap/free scores 1.1

[lti]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Possibly it's a crappy 16GB chip that they marked as 8GB to avoid the bad sectors

I think that's the most likely reason.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I'd go with them using the same chip for 8 and 16GB versions just to save on the costs (ADATA isn't the brightest manufacturer but it's nowhere near crap - as far as I've seen in my country, they're usually a bit cheaper than the cheapest Kingston offering, but they're worth the money in terms of speeds.) because so far, I've noticed that the USB does work now, and it reports 16GB, as well as passes a h2testw run for 16GB.

[goodpsusearch]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Hey no worries, I'm in no hurry whatsoever. Even if you post them a year from now, I'll still be greatfull.

Heck, I'm so far behind on so many opened/pending projects, that I sometimes just want to take everything into a giant dumpster and start over again - really agonizing when you're this close to finishing a project, and then something small comes in a way that halts all progress... and lately, it seems every single thing I've been trying to repair has been like that.

This describes my last 4 years... That's the reason I decided to take everything I have from a category, for example computer LCD monitors, then apply the following algorithm:

check what's working, decide what to keep what to sell, what to donor.

find what's not working:

if it can easily be repaired then repair it immediately

what cannot be easily repaired but it's worth keeping, store

and what cannot be easily be repaired and it's not worth it, then will be used for parts and recycled.

Applied succesfully to DVDs, VHS VCRs, LCD monitors and LCD TVs, motherboards and gpus (AGP and PCI-e).

Currently trying to do the same on audio equipment but I get constantly interrupted and also meet new obstacles.

And my perfectionist inner self doesn't help at all.

I'm no pro either... but in the US, a house call for a plumber for an issue like that can easily be $100+. So unless it's something I really can't do, I'd rather attempt it myself.

As a bonus, our house also has tree roots growing somewhere in the sewer line (not sure if on our side or the county... but would rather not find out if it's on our side, as the county or our HOA might have us re-do the line, and that will for sure be at least several $1000's.) So every once in a lucky while, it blocks up. It's done it enough times that now I've bought a motorized snake and just deal with the thing when it happens - rain or sunshine (but usually always the coldest winter day, it seems - Murphy's law, I suppose! ) It doesn't happen too often, though - used to be once a year, but it seems I've been able to keep it in check lately by using root treatment chemicals (Copper Sulfate) more regularly, but in smaller amounts. In any case, at least I don't have to call anyone to unclog my own crap for me... literally!

This was very painful to read, fortunately the plumber I call, I can trusty him somehow and also he does the kind of work that other people refuse to do. He helped me while re innovating my house and I really owe him. There are some issues, like that he never shows up in time, but nobody's perfect.

And he is dirt cheap

[dragos2009]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

You know, I recently build a machine out of scrap parts to use as a "testing"/messing around without dirtying my main computer.

It's an Asus M2A-VM HDMI, with 6GB of DDR2 and an Athlon X4 640 that i paid a whole 10€ from China. I'm still running the onboard X1250 graphics (hey, at least it's not an nForce). I say all this so you understand that any half-decent C2Q build will run rings around it.
The only thing I bought new for it is a Patriot 128 SSD, chosen using the industry standard of "Price + postage, lowest first"

Well, every time I use (and especially these few days I use it quite a bit) I'm amazed at how well it runs. I'm watching stuff on Youtube while 7zipping stuff and despite heavy paging sometimes it still doesn't lag or stutter. The OS is bog standard Win 8.1 with classic shell, so no fancy carefully compiled linuxes or anything.

The main issue there might be with Core2 today is that so many of them were built on cheap G31/G41 boards with only 2 DDR2 slots that practically limit you to 4GB ram maximum (Yes, there are a few 4GB Dimms that work on Intel, no I'm not paying 60€ for a module)

lookin online i seen that a q9550 is equal to your athlon in cpu passmark performance test a q6600 is quite slower compared to yours it might a issue that you run your cpu on ddr2 motherboard instead of ddr3 since it is am3 socket cpu and should be runned with ddr3

[whatamidoing]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

lookin online i seen that a q9550 is equal to your athlon in cpu passmark performance test a q6600 is quite slower compared to yours it might a issue that you run your cpu on ddr2 motherboard instead of ddr3 since it is am3 socket cpu and should be runned with ddr3

I can see a Phenom II X4 on a good AM3 board running somewhat tight DDR3 being as good as a Q9550, but a Propus Athlon on a circa 2007 low-midrange board (sure, it's not an nForce 410 Asrock, it's well built and has that "trustworthy" feel that's hard to explain, but it's still a 690G.) with 800-5-5-5-18 DDR2 and integrated graphics that eats into the memory bandwidth? There's no way it's as good.

Q9550s, Q9650s and the equivalent Xeons (or a 3 GHz Q6600 for that matter) are fast.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I'd go with them using the same chip for 8 and 16GB versions just to save on the costs (ADATA isn't the brightest manufacturer but it's nowhere near crap - as far as I've seen in my country, they're usually a bit cheaper than the cheapest Kingston offering, but they're worth the money in terms of speeds.) because so far, I've noticed that the USB does work now, and it reports 16GB, as well as passes a h2testw run for 16GB.

After I had an ADATA 128GB microSD card run flakey for 6 months and later soft-brick my phone at the start of a 2-week trip to Mexico (which I couldn't troubleshoot until I made it home), I refuse to buy their cards and USB drives.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Last week's score was a pile of C2D era Nobilis systems and some various Dell optiplex's ranging from GX620's to GX380's, big towers. This is being posted from one of them; an Opti 360 C2D @ 2.66 & 4gb RAM with an upgraded dell ATI X300 GPU. I threw it a curve and tossed XP64 on it with Mypal. Functions so very nice! I really miss the XP days!

Sorry, no pictures....I didn't really think anyone would get too excited over this one....but atleast I have some things to play with while the midwest is shut down for this winter storm....I think we've gotten past the worst of the ice and we didn't lose power!!! ...so fingers crossed!

[lti]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I'd go with them using the same chip for 8 and 16GB versions just to save on the costs (ADATA isn't the brightest manufacturer but it's nowhere near crap - as far as I've seen in my country, they're usually a bit cheaper than the cheapest Kingston offering, but they're worth the money in terms of speeds.) because so far, I've noticed that the USB does work now, and it reports 16GB, as well as passes a h2testw run for 16GB.

I haven't seen that before. I guess it really isn't worth finding such a low-capacity flash chip or there is some application that requires the lower capacity (I've heard of that).

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Steam sale- Valve Complete Pack. MSRP $145, paid $14.02.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Thanks to my dorm room colleague, I got two "for parts" phones. Both are Samsung, one is a Galaxy S Duos 2 (GT-S7582, more or less the predecesor of the S3 Mini.) and the other was a white and very lightly cracked (the cracks are almost hair-line thin) Note II N7100. Concluded both have dead mobos - the S7582 will have to wait a LOOOOOOONG time, but the Note II has had an 4G/LTE N7105 mobo transplanted in (with a horribly awful amount of fiddling) and so far everything is working just fine.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I received this HP ProDesk (600g1 TWR) from an EDU back in September....just a refresher:

It's the one on the top of the left side stack of towers.



I finally got around to diddling with this one, I stored it in the 'clean room', as it's a bit newer and in minty condition....and the case is nice looking IMO. Very simplistic & clean design, and not paper-thin flimsy metal as modern HP's tend to be. Supports 4th gen I-series. I cracked it open...8gb RAM in it and a 4gb quadro 2200....nothing overly exciting....but what piqued my interest, they will run the I7-4790K Haskwell @ 4GHz.

It works. It was in the 'pile' from the school, as they "upgraded" it from 8.1 to 10 and it's been in a reboot loop ever since. I reloaded it for testing purposes, it's fine. The 4790K can be had for ~$120 (or less if you really dig), going to tinker around with this one.

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

APC Smart-UPS 2200 (SMT2200) - $215. No batteries. Bought an RBC55 pack (not from APC, I ain't paying their price-gouge fee for batteries) and am awaiting the arrival of both.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Used Xbox One Wired Controller (3rd party)- $5. Normally I wouldn't post that, but this particular one still goes for $50 new... officially licensed at least. Missing the "proprietary" micro USB cable, but I have some narrow molded ones that I've been able to jam in there and make work. Has very good linux and win10 support, which is what I was after.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Been testing my ASUS X75VD from post #5203 after managing to repair it with the CH341A programmer from post #5254.

It's running great, and NFS Hot Pursuit 2010 (not the remastered version) runs surprisingly good.

Why do I say surprisingly?

Because the same game struggles to run on a HP G6-2238SL (which I need to reflash its BIOS with the CH341A as well - I have issues getting the WiFi to turn on and I strongly believe it's either the BIOS that's broken or the ME region, just like it was on the X75VD) which runs a HD7670M 1GB. On that one, despite it being the same dynamic graphics setup as the X75VD (Intel HD3000 when not in intensive apps, GT610M when gaming), either my issue is the HD7670M not kicking in at all when it should, or HP's switching graphics setup is just downright craptacular, at which point I'll probably sell it and look for something else that runs a 7670M (and hopefully in fixed mode.) and has some proper support for switching under Windows 10.

HP used to have some rather good machines with fixed switching - the whole DV6/DV7 lineage starting with models 3000/4000 (3000 for DV6 and 4000 for DV7) and I think up to the 7000 series (since starting with 7000 I remember they went nVidia instead of ATi/AMD), all had support for fixed switching graphics (and the 6000 even had a BIOS setting in that regard - 3000 and 4000 didn't, but that's because they wouldn't run any other way than fixed.). Their G6 and G7 models were stupidly crap in that regard - I have both a G6-1031TX and the above mentioned G6-2238SL. Both are made to dynamically switch the GPUs. Or so at least HP thought - they won't switch correctly no matter what. The former runs a i3 380M + HD6470M and the latter runs a i3-2350M + 7670M.

G62/G72 models though, they're the same story as the DV6-3000 and DV7-4000. Almost. I have two G62s - one is a G62-a35so, which is a slightly newer version of the G62, running a Phenom P820 + HD5470 (no idea what's the difference between N and P versions of the mobile Phenoms, same goes for T and P versions of Penryn based Core 2 Duo chips) and a slightly older version, a G62-452SL, which runs a soldered i3-350M + HD6370M. While the a35so runs on the same basis as the dv6-3000 and dv7-4000 (which is fixed mode graphics - basically you run off the HD4250 when on battery, and off the HD5470 when on AC.), the 452SL is basically a main GPU only machine - there's no switching ability DESPITE HP advertising it that way on the casing, and I've legitimately checked if I missed something during the GPU driver install. There's no Intel HD Graphics showing up alongside the Radeon, even after complete driver installation.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Speaking of HPs, just scored another HP g6, this time the more classic 1000 series, model g6-1209sq. A4-3300M APU (socketed, thank god) + Radeon 6470M discrete GPU. Had to reflow the 6470M though as it was crashing with a SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED BSOD, pointing to none other than the 6470M's driver (this happened with both HP's drivers and AMD's drivers.)

Reflowed, repasted with MX4, dropped a Samsung branded Seagate ST500LM012 500GB and it runs snappy now. Haven't tested any games on it though. Not wasting a SSD for it since it's not worth very much. The 2238SL I have back at home though, I hope to go home and get it during free time of my exams and start fixing it (has a pestering WiFi issue that I suppose I could fix by flashing a older BIOS+EC dump. Before anyone asks, I took about any step possible to fix that WiFi issue without a CH341A.)

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

A local business dropped some interesting things off....a few 'picks of the litter'...

A custom build in a silverstone case; Asus A88XM-A. AMD A8 @ 3.9GHz, 16gb Corsair RAM, and a GF210 1gb GPU. The only issue I noticed, the onboard NIC does not work....not unusual in these parts, lots of lightning. Added a PCI, life is good.


The little devil on my shoulder wants to see what I can overclock that CPU to...









Next is a Nobilis server....which is housed in the awesome Chenbro SR209 case. This one works, but the entire HDD cage was removed. I found a new-in-box Chenbro SAS cage that fits this case for $30 shipped. The motherboard in this case is an Intel S3000AH server board, LGA775 with a C2D & 4gb RAM. Useless. I want to make something with the case.







A bunch of P4 & C2D era laptops.... I found some interesting things on these, but of course for the sake of confidentiality, I won't say....but no porn...just a lot of business records. ...but I can say, Dell Financial charges 24.9% interest when they finance computers more than 60 days! That's on par with a credit card! Robbery without a gun!

dban destroying it all....



Some Netbooks..... Dual core Atom N2900's @ 1.6.



More laptops I haven't gone through yet and a box full of radio gear...



Not bad overall.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

That socket FM2 system, I see, uses a Richland CPU! The Richlands, are AMD's version of Pentium 4! Those will need at least close to 5 GHz to compete with most 3.6 GHz processors!

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

That socket FM2 system, I see, uses a Richland CPU! The Richlands, are AMD's version of Pentium 4! Those will need at least close to 5 GHz to compete with most 3.6 GHz processors!

Meh....it was free!! I'll make a few bucks on it to someone that it will make a spiffy web browsing, emailing, facebooking, letter-typer!!

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored a free ASUS R7 265 2GB GDDR5 from my dad. Black screen though card gets detected during POST. He has no background info on it so neither of us know much about it besides it being a rebranded HD7850.

Reflowed the chip yesterday, but not before removing half a kilo of dust. I'd be surprised if it POSTs, shows up an image and even runs correctly under Linux (IIRC my dad runs Pop OS on a Sempron 145 AM3 because I didn't have anything better to give him (it originally was an i3 540 that was acting up, which I later fixed and sold)

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

There's a APC Back-UPS 1500 (old beige type) on my local Craigslist going for $10. Listed as not working / for parts. I wonder if I should bite.

The thing is, I don't really have a use for UPSes.
I already have 4 of them in the garage sitting and collecting dust, sans batteries of course (which were dead and I removed a long time ago.) I've only kept them for the transformers, two of which I have on my test bench when I want low voltage and high current AC for... resuscitating "stubborn" circuits.

Anyways, what do you all think? Worth getting that APC 1500 just for the parts if nothing else? It's not too far from where I live (in terms of mileage), though not exactly close either (about 30-40-ish minutes drive.)

A local business dropped some interesting things off....a few 'picks of the litter'...

A custom build in a silverstone case; Asus A88XM-A. AMD A8 @ 3.9GHz, 16gb Corsair RAM, and a GF210 1gb GPU. The only issue I noticed, the onboard NIC does not work....not unusual in these parts, lots of lightning. Added a PCI, life is good.


The little devil on my shoulder wants to see what I can overclock that CPU to...

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1644622663

Nice!

But for the love of the electronics gods, please get rid of the GF210 GPU from that system and use the APU's output instead. The A8-6600k (and non-k version too) carry a Radeon HD 8570D... which isn't a power house by any means. According to Techpowerup, it's about on-par with a GF220 and overall slower than an HD5570 and HD4670, so it may not seem like a big upgrade. But believe me, it IS. GeForce 210 is just a re-brand of the GeForce 8400 GS. It's a painfully-slow GPU with only 4 ROPs and 64-bit memory bus. In contrast, the HD 8570D has twice those, runs at faster clocks, and is DX11-compliant. It will even run some modern "e-sports" games like Rocket League, Fortnite, CS:GO, and GTA:V (probably @ 720p and low settings for decent FPS... but that's still miles better than Intel HD4000 and 100's of miles better than what the GF210 can do.) Just make sure to max out the RAM in the system, since the APU will feed the graphics memory off of that. And also make sure the memory is set to run dual-channel, along with use faster RAM modules. All of these will help the built-in GPU quite a bit.

As for OC'ing - I think 4.5-4.7 GHz is where those APUs will max-out on stock cooling... but TBH, I don't think it's worth it. Like RJARRRPCGP mentioned, these APUs are kind of like Intel's P4 - high clocks, but IPC is rather poor. So probably best not to OC and keep the temperatures as low as possible - especially under full/high load. The built-in GPU in these APUs actually does make them quite failure-prone. If you don't believe me, I can send you my dead A8-6600k. I also have an A8-7600k. Both were obtained dead from an eBay junk parts lot... and surprisingly were the only two dead CPUs from the bunch.

Next is a Nobilis server....which is housed in the awesome Chenbro SR209 case. This one works, but the entire HDD cage was removed. I found a new-in-box Chenbro SAS cage that fits this case for $30 shipped. The motherboard in this case is an Intel S3000AH server board, LGA775 with a C2D & 4gb RAM. Useless. I want to make something with the case.

Well, I wouldn't call that LGA775 C2D system "useless". Boring? -Sure. Indeed the case is really nice, though, and would be cool to see on of your "usual" dual CPU builds or something of that caliber.

Some Netbooks..... Dual core Atom N2900's @ 1.6.

Are these good for anything these days, aside from very extremely basic online browsing?

That socket FM2 system, I see, uses a Richland CPU! The Richlands, are AMD's version of Pentium 4! Those will need at least close to 5 GHz to compete with most 3.6 GHz processors!

Yeah, their IPC is pretty bad.
I have an A4-5300 in one of my scrap builds. It's supposedly a dual-core chip running @ 3.4 GHz and 3.6 "boost". But it performs only slightly faster than my Athlon 64 X2 6000+ that I usually run under-clocked to 2.8 GHz (instead of 3 GHz) and 1.175V (instead of 1.3V) for heat-reducing and energy-saving purposes. And that X2 6000+ is a pretty old chip at this point. You'd think (or at least I did) the overall faster clock and much more modern instruction set would make that A4-5300 fly compared to the X2 6000+. But in reality, both struggle about the same with 1080p Youtube. In the case of the A4, it can't do 1080p @ 60 FPS or really high-bitrate 1080p. But it will do "regular" 1080p @ 30 FPS OK. In comparison, the X2 6000+ can't usually do even 1080p @ 30 FPS, unless it's ultra-wide screen (so not technically 1080p) or lower bitrate 1080p. Still, that difference is rather minimal, given how much "newer" the A4 is. Then again, some say the core count in these APUs aren't really true, but rather that AMD labels them that way with their "SMT" technology. In the case of the A4, it's supposedly a dual core chip, but in reality it's more like a single core with a half-baked 2nd core. And the case of the 4-core APUs... more like 2 cores and 2 "helpers". But the built-in graphics are quite reasonable - way way better than anything Intel HD of the time or even up until the more recent 6th and 7th gen Intel UHDs.

Try the enhanced-h264ify extension if you don't use it already. It forces Youtube to use h264 and it does miracles on the older stuff, if you're lucky and the GPU/drivers/browser/moon phase combination are supported it will even use HW decoding

Thanks for the tip!
Will do so shortly and report back. I do have a discrete HD 4650 in that system, so it should technically support hardware H.264.

The next is this ECS K7SEM with a 1.3GHz Athlon and 1gb RAM in it. Caps were bad. It doesn't run anything faster than 100FSB, and is probably not worth the value of the caps I put in it.....but I revived it anyway....

You'd be surprised.
The K7SEM and their equivalent PCChips were quite popular boards back in the day. Depending on the PCB version you have, you may be able to flash a newer BIOS and get some better OC features, just for shits and giggles. But that probably indeed isn't worth messing with.

Speaking of K7SEM, I have one too - I got it from a fellow eBay seller who sent me this Casing Power MPT-301 PSU for $4 total. I honestly though the item would get canceled. But no. You see it above.
Anyways, I forget now the precise details of how we started chatting, but seller told me his retro PC build failed due to a bad motherboard (hence the sale of the PSU.) So as a token of gratitude, I decided to send him an older Pentium 4 board that could allow him to finish his retro built (and last we chatted... it did ) Then he asked me if I'd like the broken mobo he had, since it was going to get scrapped/recycled otherwise. And I couldn't say no.

So that's how I also a K7SEM now. The thing is, it really is dead. It has a *soldered* CPU, and it's bad (shorted core.) I'm planning to pull it out, but I don't have a spare 462 socket or CPU. Would be interesting to see if the board would work otherwise, though. One of the two memory slots also took a hit (burned contacts.) But surprisingly, the Northbridge survived... or seems to, anyways. After isolating/removing power to the CPU VRM, the board can at least power on without anything else overheating... so there is a glimpse of hope!
Now all this trouble... worth it? - Heck no!
But fun to see what happens? - Heck YES!

Pics as promised. It's definitely not usable. It does otherwise work other than the burned screen....but the nit-picker in me can't get past the horrible burn....it apparently was on a Mac all it's life....I guess nobody heard of a screensaver...

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1642977826

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1642977826

Ouch!

That is indeed pretty bad. I've never quite seen burn-in like this - not on a CRT anyways. (But believe it or not, I've seen worse on months-old OLED TVs.)

Now here is where I get curious ... or was thinking about it while taking a crap the other day (so the idea may be worth just as much, FWIW): what if you take a picture of the screen while turned On and displaying a white background... then invert the colors on image you took, lighten the image, and boost its contrast. After that, display the image on this CRT monitor for several days with the tube @ maximum brightness and contrast to try to "reverse burn-in" the image. Sounds too crazy?
Or maybe I ought to write my ideas down more often while on the throne.

Asus & HP 24" 1080 displays......untested, but I'd wager they need to be recapped.

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1643073339

The ASUS - yeah it probably needs a recap. There was even a thread about it here. Reason I know is because there was a very similar-looking 24" ASUS on my local Craigslist here. Poster said it would start only after sitting plugged in for a while and then power cord unplugged and plugged... so yeah, that one very likely was bad caps. I actually wanted to get it, but listing said only to call for contact, and there was no phone number listed I sent an email, but I don't think that got anywhere. Oh well.

The cool piece was an APG cash drawer from some old POS system pulled from a defunct gift & florist shop. He said he sold the system, but the buyer didn't want the drawer for some reason.
...
Damn, no money....

This made me LOL.
Imagine if there was.

Ah yes, I once found $1 in the trash can in my last job. I was talking with the warehouse guy, and he always poked a little fun at me for always looking what was in the warehouse trash cans. Then one day, while we were chatting and I was looking through the usual trash can, I reached in side to grab "something". He was like, what did you find now that's so valuable. And I answered, nothing much, just some cash. He scoffed me off... then saw me pulling the $1 bill out and was like Who the F- throws away money?!
Me:

Possibly it's a crappy 16GB chip that they marked as 8GB to avoid the bad sectors or it was cheaper to buy 16GB and use firmware to make 8GB and 16GB versions.

More than likely, the former.

I know some manufacturers have done this... but generally it doesn't make much sense to intentionally cripple a better part. In the case of the flash here, it would be better to just make only 16 GB versions and sell them cheaper than the competition than to make some 8 GB versions and get much lower price for them while also having to complete with other vendors for the 16 GB prices.

After I had an ADATA 128GB microSD card run flakey for 6 months and later soft-brick my phone at the start of a 2-week trip to Mexico (which I couldn't troubleshoot until I made it home), I refuse to buy their cards and USB drives.

They're OK... most of the time.
At least so far, I've had good luck with my two ADATA 128 GB SSDs.
One of them I am using solely for the purpose of gaming - in particular, Fortnite, since the constant updates used to really really fragment my regular rust-spinning HDDs... not to mention the very slow loading times. I installed this ADATA HDD in my Optiplex 790 PC shortly after posting it. So it's had about 1.5 years of "abuse" from updates from Epic since then... and actually more, since at some point an update broken the launcher on Windows 7, and the only way to get around that was to copy-pasta an older version of the launcher (~1 GB worth) every time I wanted to play... so about 2-3 times weekly. That went on for about 6 months, until Epic "fixed" the bug. But now it's taking a break again, since Epic did another update, and this time I can't do anything to get the game started. *sigh* modern games.