best cheap/free scores 1.1

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  • Compgeke
    Badcaps Veteran
    • Feb 2014
    • 524
    • USA

    #1441
    Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

    HP XW8600 tower for $10.

    Has a Xeon X5260, 4 gigs ram and a Quadro FX1700. Not entirely sure why you would get the XW8600 for that config but whatever floats your boat.

    I'll put Two E5440s, 24 gigs of ram and whatever video card I have around into it to make a fairly decent workstation tower.

    Comment

    • ratdude747
      Black Sheep
      • Nov 2008
      • 17136
      • USA

      #1442
      Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

      Not one of my best scores, but certainly one of the oddest: $12.50 Sony Cybershot U20. Had a 64MB MS and old Porter carry case. Not sure if it will USB charge (testing it to see) but I do have a sony AAA/AA NiMH charger at home... I'm out of town and I'm running some HF 900mAH AAA's for testing.

      Also grabbed a rosewill (IIRC) 2 USB/VGA KVM for $0.99... needs the selector module replaced (aka stripboard and a switch, I have some nice ones left over from a project).
      sigpic

      (Insert witty quote here)

      Comment

      • goodpsusearch
        Badcaps Legend
        • Oct 2009
        • 2848
        • Greece

        #1443
        Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

        What's the meaning of buying things you wont use?

        Comment

        • ratdude747
          Black Sheep
          • Nov 2008
          • 17136
          • USA

          #1444
          Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

          Who said I bought things I wouldn't use?
          sigpic

          (Insert witty quote here)

          Comment

          • goodpsusearch
            Badcaps Legend
            • Oct 2009
            • 2848
            • Greece

            #1445
            Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

            http://www.dpreview.com/products/son...ts/sony_dscu20

            I don't know how this could be of any practical use

            Comment

            • ratdude747
              Black Sheep
              • Nov 2008
              • 17136
              • USA

              #1446
              Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

              ^ Why NOT? Everything I upload to BCN is 2MP anyway, I used to use a 2MP Canon Powershot S110/S100. This thing (while not having optical zoom) is even smaller yet... Small enough to stash anywhere.

              Yeah, many of you are saying "use ur phone"... but I hate taking smartphone pictures. Not to mention they are a bit of a pain to get off the phone sometimes and all. Not to mention it has a little bit of "charm" to it... Not what one would normally see.

              If it was $15 or more I wouldn't have... but hell, it was too oddball and unique to pass up.
              sigpic

              (Insert witty quote here)

              Comment

              • goodpsusearch
                Badcaps Legend
                • Oct 2009
                • 2848
                • Greece

                #1447
                Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

                Quote: Not to mention they are a bit of a pain to get off the phone sometimes and all.

                That's true!

                I found best for me to take pictures with my compact camera 12MP and then resize to 2000x1500, the badcaps limit. This makes the final outcome full of detail and contrast without the digital noise the original photos suffer from.

                Comment

                • ratdude747
                  Black Sheep
                  • Nov 2008
                  • 17136
                  • USA

                  #1448
                  Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

                  ^lower res sensors of the same size are also somewhat noise immune due to the source of noise being physical distance between signal paths.

                  Hence why the highest MP camera I have in use is a 6MP Canon A540 (although I have a olympus 12 MP with a smashed screen and a questionable 10MP Kodak in the junk pile, the former was noisy as shit).
                  sigpic

                  (Insert witty quote here)

                  Comment

                  • Compgeke
                    Badcaps Veteran
                    • Feb 2014
                    • 524
                    • USA

                    #1449
                    Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

                    Noise is also why I use a Nikon D90 over a cheaper 36MP or whatever Walmart special. It might be "only" 12 MP or something like that but at least my pictures look a lot better than the cell phone.

                    Comment

                    • Compgeke
                      Badcaps Veteran
                      • Feb 2014
                      • 524
                      • USA

                      #1450
                      Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

                      Great day, found a $5 Dell Vostro 3450.

                      Has a Core i5 2410M, no ram, 320 GB HDD, DVD Burner, Windows 7. Only problem is one of the screen hinges ripped out but I can put a small bolt through it and trim it off level - no big deal. Not sure if it's ATI graphics or not but I'll find out when I get home.

                      Also picked up a free Sansui G-5000 and Sony DVP-CX777 ES 400 CD\DVD\SACD changer.

                      Comment

                      • 3d0
                        Senior Member
                        • Jan 2014
                        • 159
                        • BiH

                        #1451
                        Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

                        Saw this pc case outside, all smashed up on the front side. I thought someone had ripped everything out of it. But I was wrong.
                        Took a sneak peak from behind and there is a PSU and mobo present so I took it home. Opened up the panel, and I was surprised, nothings missing!
                        Fired her up. fans are spinning but no display.
                        Upon further inspection the mobo had some bad caps. KZG 6.3V 3300uF replaced them and now she works.
                        Spec:
                        Cpu - AM2 Athlon64 3000+
                        RAM - 1GB
                        HDD - Hitachi 160GB 3.0Gb/s
                        MB - Biostar NF61V Micro AM2
                        DVD/RW - Philips

                        Surprised to find the HDD inside.
                        Attached Files

                        Comment

                        • ratdude747
                          Black Sheep
                          • Nov 2008
                          • 17136
                          • USA

                          #1452
                          Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

                          ^Nice score... And the PSU?
                          sigpic

                          (Insert witty quote here)

                          Comment

                          • 3d0
                            Senior Member
                            • Jan 2014
                            • 159
                            • BiH

                            #1453
                            Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

                            It's a no name brand, model lpa2-23 400W not even worth mentioning.
                            If I find a cheap X2 cpu it would be a decent machine for web and office work, the psu would need a upgrade though.

                            Comment

                            • momaka
                              master hoarder
                              • May 2008
                              • 12164
                              • Bulgaria

                              #1454
                              Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

                              You can probably overclock that 3000+ a good 200-400 MHz or so without a bump in voltage. It won't beat the performance of a X2, but still worth it. I juked around with one of my trash-picked PCs yesterday, and I managed to push the 2 GHz Athlon 64 3200+ CPU up to 2.4 GHz no problems.

                              I'm not sure how overclock-friendly your BioStar mobo is, but if it's anything like my GeForce 6100-M9, it should be easy and painless.
                              Nice find!

                              Comment

                              • 3d0
                                Senior Member
                                • Jan 2014
                                • 159
                                • BiH

                                #1455
                                Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

                                Exactly what I did!
                                Overclocking it @2.2Ghz was easy but ran into troubles with the HDD. The read/write speed are stupidly slow..less than 10MB/s. It takes ages just to open up the browser on a freshly installed win7. It's constantly "writing-reading" something.
                                Tried swapping the sata cable, defragmenting, DMA is enabled???
                                Any software worth trying before I toss the hdd?

                                Comment

                                • retiredcaps
                                  Badcaps Legend
                                  • Apr 2010
                                  • 9271

                                  #1456
                                  Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

                                  Originally posted by 3d0
                                  Any software worth trying before I toss the hdd?
                                  Maybe try a live linux distro like Lubuntu and run

                                  sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/sda

                                  This will report something like

                                  $ sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/sda
                                  [sudo] password for administrator:

                                  /dev/sda:
                                  Timing cached reads: 1784 MB in 2.00 seconds = 892.43 MB/sec
                                  Timing buffered disk reads: 120 MB in 3.00 seconds = 39.97 MB/sec

                                  Mine old used hard drive gets almost 40MB/sec.

                                  Maybe also try resetting the bios to default settings and retest. Maybe the overclocking has something do with the slow disk performance? I'm not an overclock expert and have no idea of the ramifications.
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                                  Comment

                                  • momaka
                                    master hoarder
                                    • May 2008
                                    • 12164
                                    • Bulgaria

                                    #1457
                                    Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

                                    Originally posted by 3d0
                                    ... but ran into troubles with the HDD. The read/write speed are stupidly slow..less than 10MB/s.
                                    Try the HDD in another computer. If it does the same, then it's the HDD. Otherwise, it could also be a setting in the BIOS or perhaps controller issues.

                                    Comment

                                    • stj
                                      Great Sage 齊天大聖
                                      • Dec 2009
                                      • 30934
                                      • Albion

                                      #1458
                                      Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

                                      slow harddrives can be caused by a faulty cable.
                                      the transfers are checksumed and a corrupt packet will be re-sent.

                                      Comment

                                      • 3d0
                                        Senior Member
                                        • Jan 2014
                                        • 159
                                        • BiH

                                        #1459
                                        Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

                                        Problem solved. It was the chinese sata cables I had causing trouble. It works flawlessly with the one from my main rig.

                                        @retiredcaps

                                        Just what I was looking for:

                                        /dev/sda:
                                        Timing cached reads: 1114MB in 2.00 seconds = 556.57MB/sec
                                        Timing buffered disk reads: 224MB in 3.01 seconds = 74.35MB/sec

                                        Thanks guys

                                        Comment

                                        • Topcat
                                          The Boss Stooge
                                          • Oct 2003
                                          • 16955
                                          • United States

                                          #1460
                                          Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

                                          was given a 32" rca LCD from a friend today. has a standby light only, does not power up. I'll get into it over the weekend and see whats up with it.
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