Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

Yeah, that's what I was suggesting - keep the system in the same case, but just fabricate a new front door for the case

I don't know why I said chenbro....I meant to say Chieftec. It is absolutely a chieftec case....the parts actually interchange with the steel one I have here.

Looks good... though I'm curious how that would have looked with some UV LEDs instead of the strip. I might try that on mine.

You're killin' me! HAHA UV LED's....hmmm you're contributing to the delinquency of a minor!!

eBay.
Just have to look for "Apevia Power Supply" and look through the listings. They don't come up very often, as these are rather OLD PSUs now. But if you look often enough, one will pop-up. You'll certainly be in for a full recap job, though.

That said, I was able to find one for you.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/115142190636?

Not sure if I'd pay what looks like close to $35 (though it does have a "Make Offer" option.) I got mine (model ATX-IB680W) for just the price of shipping... and its caps weren't even popped yet (or bad.) I haven't posted this one BCN yet, but I will. It's almost the same as TC's, but has RGB fans - as in, fans that can be switched between Red, Green, or Blue light and not the modern RGB "rainbow" types (which is all the better, IMO. )

Not sure what I'd do with another one....but they are unique for sure....and they seem to put out some pretty clean power, you saw the waveform (or lack thereof).

No, the primaries and secondary caps are different.
Primary should be "LP" series, if from Fuhjyyu (and I think I can see that on your PSU pictures... but you can easy check by glancing through that clear window ). The secondaries were probably Fuhjyyu TNR's. They're all yellow because Apevia / YY order them this way. On my ATX-IB680W, they're CapXon KM, also in the same yellow color. Definitely custom ordered... but always terrible choice of cap brands, though.

If this were to be heavily used, I would have replaced them all.... The primary caps lasted this long... HAHA

Agreed. These are great to take apart, until you get to the recapping part - the secondary side capacitors were literally an afterthought to the PCB's design. Apevia/YoungYear just shoved them all in there where space allowed.

No kidding!! Packed very tight. The dual push-pull fans move a lot of air....but even that couldn't save those junk caps.

What they should have done, IMO, is scrap the front fan and make the PCB bigger to make everything fit. Notice how big that main PS transformer is? It's ERL44, IIRC. The output inductor is also T130 size (1.3" diameter), which is appropriate for the power rating of the PSU. They didn't skimp on the size when it came to parts (and size does matter when it comes to half bridge PSUs. ) But the PCB layout is very sub-par.

Agreed 100%...and used better PCB material....

And that's exactly the 2nd thing I dislike how these PSUs were built.
YY put a good deal of cash into the aluminum case. It would have probably cost them almost nothing more to have proper stand-offs punched into the aluminum case instead of the cheesy metal clips/springs/brackets. Well, there's a ton more stuff I don't like how they did, if you read through my ATX-AS520W thread.

Another 100% correct. Neat & well designed casing....but that PCB mounting design wasn't worth a shit....

Sorry, I don't mean to be laughing at your struggle... but it was just too funny how YY decided to place the cap there, and of course it bulged.

Yes, it turned dark because it filters the 5VSB, and the 5VSB is one of those 2-transistor self-oscillator designs. If the caps on its output go bad, it doesn't care - it will keep going " 'till it pops", as PhotonicInduction would say. One of the caps on the 5VSB of my ATX-AS520W also did the same thing... and unfortunately, the 5VSB circuit's secondary-side auxiliary rail also burned the series resistor for the totem-pole driver circuit when this happened (due to over-voltage.) Luckily, no other damage and the PWM IC and supervisor survived on mine.

Yup, +5vstby indeed....I figured that out when I saw how 'overdone' it was compared to the others....and then of course looking at the circuitry in its path. Makes me wonder what the inside looks like...

Apevia used pretty decent sleeve bearing fans here. On mine, one was starting to grind / run dry... but a good cleaning and machine oil brought it back to life and running great again. With good cleaning and lubrication job, I think these fans should last a long time.

The rest of the case has a bunch of them as well...blue and light up! :LOL:

You couldn't help yourself, could you?

Actually, that's a pretty neat idea! I think I might even "borrow" it for my ATX-IB680W. I though of doing something similar back when I was fixing the ATX-AS520W, but with regular colored incandescent bulbs from Christmas strings (was thinking of that so as to provide more load on the 5V rail for better regulation... though it may not be needed.)

The LED's I used, 5v wouldn't strike them....it took about 8. I was doing to run some on the 5vstby, so there'd be lighting even if the system was off....but that didn't work out.

Thanks for sharing this!

I tested my ATX-IB680W with a load after recapping it last year, but I didn't have a scope to test the output ripple. In terms of voltage regulation, though, it did fairly well. I say "fairly", because despite the strong rating on the 5V rail, the 12V rail's voltage was riding a little "high" with a heavy 5V load and low 12V load. Doing this cross-load in reverse - with the 5V rail almost not loaded, but the 12V rail loaded "heavily" (just 15 Amps, really) - both the 5V and the 12V rails were well in spec. So at least my ATX-IB680W seemed "happier" with a 12V-heavy load. Oh, and the short-circuit protections worked pretty well. Plus, I was testing this with a series heating element, which dropped the AC line down to 90'ish Volts... and the PSU still worked.

This was under no load. Ripple leaking through would show up either way; with or without load...so I was still happy to see what I saw. I tend to always scope outputs of a reworked PSU before ever putting it on a motherboard.

And if you add an LED behind/inside the power switch and connect it to the 5VSB, you'd be level 9999 pimp

I'm not done yet....but the clearance was tight around the switch...but I bet I could make something fit.

...but you can't say those boards aren't cool still.

No denying that, that's for sure.

Yeah, that's what I was suggesting - keep the system in the same case, but just fabricate a new front door for the case

The door may come later on....I'd rather focus my fab skills on 'Pat'....but I will complete the system for sure.

Lucky bastard!

"asked for a car, got a computer! how's that for being born under a bad sign" - Ferris Bueller

Or maybe with your luck, someone will just drop one off for you for recycling this week?

You'd be amazed at some of the stuff that gets dropped off!! :evilgrin:

Meanwhile, I was rocking a PII 400 MHz with 64 MB and Win 98 back then.
Hey, it ran Carmageddon and Need For Speed High Stakes, so I was already spoiled.

Carmageddon...LMAO!!!!!!!! Good memories there!

And soon it might happen to Core 2 Duo/Quad CPUs and motherboards - so don't be too quick to waste them just yet.
What I've come to see now - it's best to get these things when they are literally at scrap prices and then just put them in deep storage somewhere for 10-20 years. Then retrieve them and... all of a sudden, they have "value" again.

I'm hoping so, a lot of my weird harpertown builds would fit in that genre!

[momaka]

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

Awesome! What make and model of PSU is this? I'd love to get one of them for my A64 system to add to the LED-ness of it.

EDIT: Looks like an Apevia ATX-AS500W-BK. Can't seem to find it anywhere.

eBay.
Just have to look for "Apevia Power Supply" and look through the listings. They don't come up very often, as these are rather OLD PSUs now. But if you look often enough, one will pop-up. You'll certainly be in for a full recap job, though.

That said, I was able to find one for you.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/115142190636?

Not sure if I'd pay what looks like close to $35 (though it does have a "Make Offer" option.) I got mine (model ATX-IB680W) for just the price of shipping... and its caps weren't even popped yet (or bad.) I haven't posted this one BCN yet, but I will. It's almost the same as TC's, but has RGB fans - as in, fans that can be switched between Red, Green, or Blue light and not the modern RGB "rainbow" types (which is all the better, IMO. )

Shockingly enough, the caps in the primary side were in spec, I checked them...they were values I didnt have on hand....so if they were out of whack, I'd have had to place an order..... The only ones that spooged were teh secondary caps. I didn't look to see if they were all the same series.

No, the primaries and secondary caps are different.
Primary should be "LP" series, if from Fuhjyyu (and I think I can see that on your PSU pictures... but you can easy check by glancing through that clear window ). The secondaries were probably Fuhjyyu TNR's. They're all yellow because Apevia / YY order them this way. On my ATX-IB680W, they're CapXon KM, also in the same yellow color. Definitely custom ordered... but always terrible choice of cap brands, though.

Today's task was to tackle the power supply that originated with this system... I have never seen one of these before (transparent case)....

I'm genuinely surprised to hear that, given the number of system's that have gone through your shop.

When it came to servicing this unit, I really liked the way it came apart.....but that was about all I can say I liked about it from a servicer standpoint.

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1647636250

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1647636250

Agreed. These are great to take apart, until you get to the recapping part - the secondary side capacitors were literally an afterthought to the PCB's design. Apevia/YoungYear just shoved them all in there where space allowed.

What they should have done, IMO, is scrap the front fan and make the PCB bigger to make everything fit. Notice how big that main PS transformer is? It's ERL44, IIRC. The output inductor is also T130 size (1.3" diameter), which is appropriate for the power rating of the PSU. They didn't skimp on the size when it came to parts (and size does matter when it comes to half bridge PSUs. ) But the PCB layout is very sub-par.

The build quality was fair at best.... The PCB was rather flimsy and a corner had cracked. I attribute that to the way it was shoehorned into the main part of the body as well, there are small mounting brackets that slip into a track in the aluminum, and they don't sit flush, so it stressed teh corners.

And that's exactly the 2nd thing I dislike how these PSUs were built.
YY put a good deal of cash into the aluminum case. It would have probably cost them almost nothing more to have proper stand-offs punched into the aluminum case instead of the cheesy metal clips/springs/brackets. Well, there's a ton more stuff I don't like how they did, if you read through my ATX-AS520W thread.

Yay, a bunch of spooged fukkyou's!! Note the one under the heatsink....it expanded itself so tightly in there, it was a real joy to remove it....I was almost forced to desolder all the FET's and remove the sink....but I finally got it loose. Also note how discolored it is....it was supposed to be yellow like the rest of them....but it apparently got very hot.

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1647636250

Sorry, I don't mean to be laughing at your struggle... but it was just too funny how YY decided to place the cap there, and of course it bulged.

Yes, it turned dark because it filters the 5VSB, and the 5VSB is one of those 2-transistor self-oscillator designs. If the caps on its output go bad, it doesn't care - it will keep going " 'till it pops", as PhotonicInduction would say. One of the caps on the 5VSB of my ATX-AS520W also did the same thing... and unfortunately, the 5VSB circuit's secondary-side auxiliary rail also burned the series resistor for the totem-pole driver circuit when this happened (due to over-voltage.) Luckily, no other damage and the PWM IC and supervisor survived on mine.

Now time for the fans. To their credit, they actually spun smoothly and the bushing sleeves had not dried out.....but I wanted to clean & repack them anyway.

Apevia used pretty decent sleeve bearing fans here. On mine, one was starting to grind / run dry... but a good cleaning and machine oil brought it back to life and running great again. With good cleaning and lubrication job, I think these fans should last a long time.

Now lets have REAL some fun!! Hmmm....extra wires....

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1647636250

Ohh hell no....

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1647636250

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1647636250

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1647636250

You couldn't help yourself, could you?

Actually, that's a pretty neat idea! I think I might even "borrow" it for my ATX-IB680W. I though of doing something similar back when I was fixing the ATX-AS520W, but with regular colored incandescent bulbs from Christmas strings (was thinking of that so as to provide more load on the 5V rail for better regulation... though it may not be needed.)

PSU buttoned up. All voltages present and some very noise-free outputs. Not bad if I do say so myself!! I've seen 'high end' PSU's making more output noise than this!

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1647636250

Thanks for sharing this!

I tested my ATX-IB680W with a load after recapping it last year, but I didn't have a scope to test the output ripple. In terms of voltage regulation, though, it did fairly well. I say "fairly", because despite the strong rating on the 5V rail, the 12V rail's voltage was riding a little "high" with a heavy 5V load and low 12V load. Doing this cross-load in reverse - with the 5V rail almost not loaded, but the 12V rail loaded "heavily" (just 15 Amps, really) - both the 5V and the 12V rails were well in spec. So at least my ATX-IB680W seemed "happier" with a 12V-heavy load. Oh, and the short-circuit protections worked pretty well. Plus, I was testing this with a series heating element, which dropped the AC line down to 90'ish Volts... and the PSU still worked.

So these are not bad PSUs.

The clear portion faces downward in the case, so this is what you'll see peering into the big window on the case....

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1647636250

Looks good... though I'm curious how that would have looked with some UV LEDs instead of the strip. I might try that on mine.

Note the translucent power connector plug! The pics don't do that justice, it lights up in a super-cool pimptastic manner!!
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1647636250

And if you add an LED behind/inside the power switch and connect it to the 5VSB, you'd be level 9999 pimp

My appreciation comes with some of the weird enthusiast goodies that were available for them, and a crossover from the days when these things had to be fabricated versus just being able to buy!

That's what I miss about those times, even though I was a bit too young in that era to do my own builds & fabrication. But yeah, good days! If you go back to the beginning / 1st page of the Post your system thread, you'll get a nice nostalgia trip - at least I do!

Games that were slightly older than netburst also tended to play well on them. Q3A and UT for example (two of my favorite older games); which were playable on a P2, played nicer on a P3, and played fabulous on a P4; with a good GPU of course.

On top of the modular VRM, there's also an onboard as well. It will run without the added VRM.... The VRM is supposed to add increased stability with the higher TDP P4's or with overclocking....or so I read....but yea, interesting feature...and the board was 100% complete, all accessories present. It also had a add-on card to allow one of the SATA ports to function as an eSATA.

Neat!
That is definitely a rare find. I wouldn't be surprised if people used a motherboard like that back in the day for crazy CPU OC. I still remember that video of a P4 CPU being OC'ed to over 5 GHz with liquid Nitrogen. I wonder what board was used there.

It was AOpen. The AX4B-533 TUBE model. I recapped a bunch of those way back in the day....as if the heat of the CPU wasn't enough to roast the motherboard caps; add a vacuum tube to the mix!! That goofy board reminds me of the $1000 cable making a recording made with a $2 cable "sound better"....but apparently they're collectors' items now...they're nearly impossible to find today.

Well, the vacuum tube was indeed straight from audiophools' land, but you can't say those boards aren't cool still.

I LOLed at the bad caps + hot vacuum tube part, BTW. Probably 100% true.

I thought of that....That would take some interesting fabrication....but given that this system was born into this case, it's probably best to keep it all together. It is as I suspected; it was made by Chenbro.

Yeah, that's what I was suggesting - keep the system in the same case, but just fabricate a new front door for the case

...and I picked up 2 for free in a week's time... The other was the Gateway P4 from the 'misc build' thread.

Lucky bastard!

Ick...stale cigarette is probably the worst odor in the world....but fresh cig smoke smell isn't terrible....but I still don't want it near my PC!

I agree when it comes to clothes / houseware.
But for some reason, that smell mixed in with the smell of older computers / electronics - IDK, I like it.

Maybe someone should create this as a special "air freshener".

Indeed...the sink is less than impressive for the GPU chip itself, but the RAM chips are very well cooled...I picked up on that as well. I am not going to uograde it like the one in the other thread apparently was....this thing won't be ran much, honestly....I'd prefer to keep it original. I did a quick ebay search for that Zalman cooler....just for grins. None to be found.

Yeah, I know what you mean here - indeed it's also cool to keep the card with the stock cooler, just for the originality of it.
And yes, those Zalman coolers pop-up very rarely on eBay. Takes regular checking for it to find one. I think some older MSI gaming cards came with one (IIRC, HD4850/4870 cards), so could get one broken just for the cooler if you really needed it.

Or maybe with your luck, someone will just drop one off for you for recycling this week?

I remember having 2gb in my VP6 in ~1999....most didn't believe me when I told them.

Meanwhile, I was rocking a PII 400 MHz with 64 MB and Win 98 back then.
Hey, it ran Carmageddon and Need For Speed High Stakes, so I was already spoiled.

Reminds me of when they started doing that to Pentium Pro's. I remember when they hit rock bottom, you could get them all day long for about what it cost to ship them....and now good ones are getting very hard to find + expensive. The same is happening to the P4 now it seems. Besides the pins on a P4, not sure what else on/in it would contain gold. The P-Pro had lots of gold in it.

And soon it might happen to Core 2 Duo/Quad CPUs and motherboards - so don't be too quick to waste them just yet.
What I've come to see now - it's best to get these things when they are literally at scrap prices and then just put them in deep storage somewhere for 10-20 years. Then retrieve them and... all of a sudden, they have "value" again.

LOL...I had a few GX270's in my fleet back when they were pretty new. Those systems with polymer caps were freight trains!

My Optiplex 170L is pretty much the same way, and it already came with polymer caps. 17+ years and still going! I also still see such systems once in a while to this day in various offices and IT rooms serving as print servers and/or other similar specialized tasks - those and the LGA775 Dells to some extent.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

These cheesy Yellow Fuhjyyu capacitors gives back some memories, I remember an old PSU full of these leaking after it was less than a year old, the good old times

Shockingly enough, the caps in the primary side were in spec, I checked them...they were values I didnt have on hand....so if they were out of whack, I'd have had to place an order..... The only ones that spooged were teh secondary caps. I didn't look to see if they were all the same series.

[Per Hansson]

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

These cheesy Yellow Fuhjyyu capacitors gives back some memories, I remember an old PSU full of these leaking after it was less than a year old, the good old times

[TechGeek]

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

Awesome! What make and model of PSU is this? I'd love to get one of them for my A64 system to add to the LED-ness of it.

EDIT: Looks like an Apevia ATX-AS500W-BK. Can't seem to find it anywhere.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

Today's task was to tackle the power supply that originated with this system... I have never seen one of these before (transparent case)....but lets have some fun with it!

It was grungy.....







When it came to servicing this unit, I really liked the way it came apart.....but that was about all I can say I liked about it from a servicer standpoint.





The build quality was fair at best.... The PCB was rather flimsy and a corner had cracked. I attribute that to the way it was shoehorned into the main part of the body as well, there are small mounting brackets that slip into a track in the aluminum, and they don't sit flush, so it stressed teh corners. Fortunately, no trace damage resulted from the broken corner, we're still good to move forward.



Yay, a bunch of spooged fukkyou's!! Note the one under the heatsink....it expanded itself so tightly in there, it was a real joy to remove it....I was almost forced to desolder all the FET's and remove the sink....but I finally got it loose. Also note how discolored it is....it was supposed to be yellow like the rest of them....but it apparently got very hot.



Fresh caps.



Now time for the fans. To their credit, they actually spun smoothly and the bushing sleeves had not dried out.....but I wanted to clean & repack them anyway. These were 'siamese twins'....joined at the power wire....so that made washing real fun.... There was no way to separate them without cutting, depinning, or desoldering....so I just made due.



Just like the day they were born!



Also washed the shell and the clear cover. The clear cover still had the protective film on it... Yea, I'm sure that sounds all well & good....but bear in mind it's been on there 20+ years.... Removing it was no treat!!



Not bad!



Now lets have REAL some fun!! Hmmm....extra wires....



Ohh hell no....







PSU buttoned up. All voltages present and some very noise-free outputs. Not bad if I do say so myself!! I've seen 'high end' PSU's making more output noise than this!



...and done!!



Now the cheesiness you've all been waiting for!! ...and keep in mind, this isn't the end to the strangeness this build will render!!



The clear portion faces downward in the case, so this is what you'll see peering into the big window on the case....



Note the translucent power connector plug! The pics don't do that justice, it lights up in a super-cool pimptastic manner!!


What's under it will be nicely lighted....and it'll make more sense later on. ...but in the mean time, the power supply has been revived; plus some!!

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

Oh, and not sure what I'll do with my dual ppro board (with two processors)...not enough ram for it to do anything interesting...

What board is it>?

[eccerr0r]

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

Speaking of memtest86+ I was staring at my i3-4th gen and it was doing shitty in DRAM speed, was getting like 8GB/sec. My i7-2nd gen is getting 20GB/sec. Though both use DDR3, the i3 has CAS11 units and the i7 has CAS9 - but is the CAS11 actually halving the bandwidth, or perhaps despite saying 128-bit mode it's not really doing dual channel access?

Despite main memory speed, the i3's L1 speed is double the i7's L1 speed and I definitely can feel a bit of difference in single threaded applications, the i3 is indeed a bit faster despite the slightly higher turboboost speed of the i7. Alas if I run four threads, the i7 is way faster...

Oh, and not sure what I'll do with my dual ppro board (with two processors)...not enough ram for it to do anything interesting...

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

...But now I've come to appreciate them quite a bit more.

My appreciation comes with some of the weird enthusiast goodies that were available for them, and a crossover from the days when these things had to be fabricated versus just being able to buy! I'm mentioning this for a reason, and it'll come out later in the thread. Games that were slightly older than netburst also tended to play well on them. Q3A and UT for example (two of my favorite older games); which were playable on a P2, played nicer on a P3, and played fabulous on a P4; with a good GPU of course.

I think it's the motherboard (well, OK, and the GPU too ) here that really sets it apart with the modular VRM module and 6 RAM slots. In case of the latter, I have not seen or heard of such a beast before. Very very interesting!

On top of the modular VRM, there's also an onboard as well. It will run without the added VRM.... The VRM is supposed to add increased stability with the higher TDP P4's or with overclocking....or so I read....but yea, interesting feature...and the board was 100% complete, all accessories present. It also had a add-on card to allow one of the SATA ports to function as an eSATA.

Reminds me of that one motherboard with the vacuum tube for the audio circuit. I'm sure many of you here know which one I'm talking about (sorry that I don't recall its brand and model at the moment.)

It was AOpen. The AX4B-533 TUBE model. I recapped a bunch of those way back in the day....as if the heat of the CPU wasn't enough to roast the motherboard caps; add a vacuum tube to the mix!! That goofy board reminds me of the $1000 cable making a recording made with a $2 cable "sound better"....but apparently they're collectors' items now...they're nearly impossible to find today.

If it's missing - make it!
Beige case would probably be a little "too retro" for this build. XP era was the "silver" case era, more or less... and IIRC the first time when people started doing cases with see-through windows, lights, and etc. So I think this case here could fit the bill with a little custom fabrication.

I thought of that....That would take some interesting fabrication....but given that this system was born into this case, it's probably best to keep it all together. It is as I suspected; it was made by Chenbro.

It's not only nowadays that these are worth a lot of money. Even back then, someone spent a good chunk of money on that 6800 Ultra. Though I think at one point, the AGP variants were considerably cheaper than the PCI-E ones, simply because AGP was getting outmoded and considered "legacy". Funny how time reverses things.

...and I picked up 2 for free in a week's time... The other was the Gateway P4 from the 'misc build' thread.

LOLz. Was the 2.6 NW an HT variant, at least? Maybe the owner/builder figured they could get a cheap CPU and OC it with that mobo?

Possible I suppose. Prescott's back then were astronomical compared to NW's....perhaps they decided to skimp on the CPU so they could splurge on the GPU.....but no excuse for the incorrect speed memory....talk about shooting yourself in the foot! Speaking of memory; I tested it today with the OCZ I found. All good!!

Nice work!
Not sure if intentional, but I like how you matched the blue Nichi LFs to the PCB color of the mobo.

That was not intentional....but now that you mention it, it was a nice match!!

Yellow Fujitsu "bumblebees" also look good on these older boards, BTW.

I didn't have the correct voltages of those to use any. Those look fabulous in a nice pretty line next to a CPU!

I always find this to be the case with the "gamer" builds - always food and spilled drinks everywhere on the case... occasionally accompanied by excessive pet & human hair... and an over-the-top "aroma" of "air fresheners".

This one was full of dust & animal hair; looked like cat. I think they ran it most its life with the side panel off, given how crudded it was.

Yeah, that's pretty bad... though I've seen a lot worse too.
At least it's not "tar-dust" - household dust mixed with cigarette smoke.
Actually, for some reason, I do like that smell - reminds me very fondly of the smell of internet cafes back in the late 90's and early 2000's.

Ick...stale cigarette is probably the worst odor in the world....but fresh cig smoke smell isn't terrible....but I still don't want it near my PC!

Actually, the thermal paste isn't/wasn't trash at all on these GPUs.
The main problem is the heatsink size - it's way way WAY too small for the 80 Watts of heat that this GPU chip outputs. Come to think of it, that's more or less how much that 2.6 GHz Northwood outputs when maxxed out. Try putting the heatsink from this GPU onto the CPU and see how hot it runs. It will hit 70+ Celsius easily and settle around the lower range of 80 Celsius... which is a shame, because the heatsink on this 6800 Ultra has a very unique look/picture. But nVidia just couldn't be bothered to do better. Funny, though, they did make the VRAM's heatsink almost as big as the GPU's, and the VRAM isn't the one that's dissipating that much heat.

If you have a spare Zalman VF-1000 heatsink or similar, that should do the trick here for this card... even if it does ruin the card's cool original look a little bit. Worth it, though - it's a 6800 Ultra.

Indeed...the sink is less than impressive for the GPU chip itself, but the RAM chips are very well cooled...I picked up on that as well. I am not going to uograde it like the one in the other thread apparently was....this thing won't be ran much, honestly....I'd prefer to keep it original. I did a quick ebay search for that Zalman cooler....just for grins. None to be found.

When you spin it by hand without it being powered, do you see it slow down instantly or does it rotate freely and slowly come to a stop, with a bit of wobble at the end? If the former, you might want to try switching it to machine oil. I've had problems with sleeve bearing fans starting when using grease for the lubricant. If that's not the case, maybe check/replace the fan's driver IC (if easy enough to take apart only, of course.) Or maybe one set of windings is open on the stator?

It's definitely something electrical. It's spinning free by hand....but when running is quite weak. Stator winding would be my guess versus driver IC. Upon powerup, it'll move to one spot and stay there until you give it a whirl....then it'll start up; slowly... I'm just going to replace it, there's nothing unusual or proprietary about it.

Hey, nothing wrong even with just 4x 256 MB modules for a total of 1 GB. Back then, 1 GB was considered "rich" and would run pretty much everything. I don't remember anyone having more than 1 GB back in those days. Most people were still on 512 MB in the XP era... and the few cheap bastards like myself on 256 MB

I remember having 2gb in my VP6 in ~1999....most didn't believe me when I told them.

WTFLOL?!??! These P4 CPU are now actually worth SOMETHING???!
4-5 years ago, you could literally get a pound of them on eBay for about $5. Sure those were the "scrap" CPUs, meant for gold smelting and whatnot, which meant you'd get a bucket full of CPUs with bent pins and dirty with thermal compound. But you could find some "gems" that way.

Reminds me of when they started doing that to Pentium Pro's. I remember when they hit rock bottom, you could get them all day long for about what it cost to ship them....and now good ones are getting very hard to find + expensive. The same is happening to the P4 now it seems. Besides the pins on a P4, not sure what else on/in it would contain gold. The P-Pro had lots of gold in it.

That's how I got my two 3.2 GHz P4 Prescotts. I plan on installing one in my current Optiplex 170L as a "retirement gift" ... though I might actually do that soon, just to get a little more use out of it. Not sure if the extra 400 MHz will net me much, though. The other is planned for an Optiplex GX270 build, since it has an AGP slot.

LOL...I had a few GX270's in my fleet back when they were pretty new. Those systems with polymer caps were freight trains!

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

Why would someone care to buy a 64-bit one? Is there really an advantage from having such a old platform

Absolutely none....I wondered the exact same thing. I don't know of any skt478 chipsets that supported more than 4gb RAM as it is.....and XP32 (as well as any 32-bit OS) will handle that.

[Uranium-235]

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

Why would someone care to buy a 64-bit one? Is there really an advantage from having such a old platform

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

SL8JX, aka P4 511.

Then there's the Gallatins. Never had one so can't say how much they manage heat over Prescott.

I have a system with some gallatin Xeons in it.....socket 604..... They are not 64 bit....the 7505 chipset that ran them supported 8gb RAM....but you had to use PAE....and it was problematic.

[Dan81]

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

SL8JX, aka P4 511.

Then there's the Gallatins. Never had one so can't say how much they manage heat over Prescott.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

I see Pentium 4's on ebay for basically nothing (sold items)

I see Pentium D 965 Extreme editions put up for 500+ but not in any completed sales. I think I'll hang onto mine

Pentium 4's are worthless except perhaps a couple rarer models....the 64-bit socket 478 (forgot the s-spec) = nonexistent. The 3.4GHz 1M 478 prescott = realtime sells for $75~$100.

[Uranium-235]

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

I see Pentium 4's on ebay for basically nothing (sold items)

I see Pentium D 965 Extreme editions put up for 500+ but not in any completed sales. I think I'll hang onto mine

[momaka]

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

I'll open this build with the comment that the Pentium 4 processor was probably my least-favorite CPU; even in Xeons.

Me too initially. But now I've come to appreciate them quite a bit more. They are the ONLY CPUs from that era that can still be used on the web today (if armed with a little patience, of course.) OK, sure, the socket 939 Athlon 64 X2 are better... but those came just a tad later and they still do worse than P4's on video encoding/decoding (including online, unless Windows 7 and FF Quantum is used - then the two cores of the X2 obviously will win over the P4's, with or without HT.) So the P4 architecture held up quite well, despite everyone's expectations (or lackthereof.)

and I really don't have a really good P4 retro gamer in my fleet....so....hmmm...yea...lets have a little fun with this!
...
Maybe that and the fact it has such a killer GPU will be enough to set it apart and qualify it for a thread of its own!

I think it's the motherboard (well, OK, and the GPU too ) here that really sets it apart with the modular VRM module and 6 RAM slots. In case of the latter, I have not seen or heard of such a beast before. Very very interesting!
Reminds me of that one motherboard with the vacuum tube for the audio circuit. I'm sure many of you here know which one I'm talking about (sorry that I don't recall its brand and model at the moment.)

Anyways, I really liked the amount of diversity of features in that particular era. Almost every manufacturer has tried something that wasn't tried before, just to make a mobo that will stand out against the others.

It's time to start taking this thing apart. I don't know if I'll be reusing this case....my OCD is already going ballistic over the missing door; but the case is otherwise in pretty decent shape. I do not have any good quality beige cases of that era to put this in....so the case may be a problem at some point.....but I'm a long way from case selection, I have time to ponder that one.

If it's missing - make it!
Beige case would probably be a little "too retro" for this build. XP era was the "silver" case era, more or less... and IIRC the first time when people started doing cases with see-through windows, lights, and etc. So I think this case here could fit the bill with a little custom fabrication.

The best part of this build is the eVGA GeForce 6800 Ultra 256mb GPU....and an Audigy2 sound card.

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1646704260

Nice!

It's not only nowadays that these are worth a lot of money. Even back then, someone spent a good chunk of money on that 6800 Ultra. Though I think at one point, the AGP variants were considerably cheaper than the PCI-E ones, simply because AGP was getting outmoded and considered "legacy". Funny how time reverses things.

It has 2gb RAM, not a single stick matched and they're the wrong speed (PC2100 & PC2700)....not a single stick of PC3200, which is what it needed....

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1646704260

A Northwood @ 2.6GHz.... Boggles my mind why they put such a lame CPU and a bunch of slow mis-matched memory in this thing, but such a kick ass GPU....

LOLz. Was the 2.6 NW an HT variant, at least? Maybe the owner/builder figured they could get a cheap CPU and OC it with that mobo?

While working at Microcenter some years back, I remember one of the lamest builds I had to put together - this person bought the most insane-expensive overclocking motherboard (had dip switches for every single voltage and clock imaginable - something not exactly typical at all for an Intel 7th gen i-series mobo) and the slowest-clocked and completely locked i5 CPU. It just made no sense why they wanted to put that build together. I don't recall what they had picked for the GPU, but it didn't match the build either. Whatever, the customer is always right, right?

Anyway, here's where the fun starts.....lets polymod this thing!

The secondary VRM module first....

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1646704260

...and of course the motherboard...

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1646704260

Nice work!
Not sure if intentional, but I like how you matched the blue Nichi LFs to the PCB color of the mobo.

Yellow Fujitsu "bumblebees" also look good on these older boards, BTW.

The motherboard was disgustingly filthy. I did hotwash it, blast the water out with the air hose, and then let it sit under a heat register for an hour or so while I finished the fans.

I always find this to be the case with the "gamer" builds - always food and spilled drinks everywhere on the case... occasionally accompanied by excessive pet & human hair... and an over-the-top "aroma" of "air fresheners".

Now for the GPU, which is just as crudded as the motherboard was.....

Yeah, that's pretty bad... though I've seen a lot worse too.
At least it's not "tar-dust" - household dust mixed with cigarette smoke.
Actually, for some reason, I do like that smell - reminds me very fondly of the smell of internet cafes back in the late 90's and early 2000's.

Heatsinks removed to reveal the trash thermal paste they used has comletely dried out.

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1646704260

Actually, the thermal paste isn't/wasn't trash at all on these GPUs.
The main problem is the heatsink size - it's way way WAY too small for the 80 Watts of heat that this GPU chip outputs. Come to think of it, that's more or less how much that 2.6 GHz Northwood outputs when maxxed out. Try putting the heatsink from this GPU onto the CPU and see how hot it runs. It will hit 70+ Celsius easily and settle around the lower range of 80 Celsius... which is a shame, because the heatsink on this 6800 Ultra has a very unique look/picture. But nVidia just couldn't be bothered to do better. Funny, though, they did make the VRAM's heatsink almost as big as the GPU's, and the VRAM isn't the one that's dissipating that much heat.

If you have a spare Zalman VF-1000 heatsink or similar, that should do the trick here for this card... even if it does ruin the card's cool original look a little bit. Worth it, though - it's a 6800 Ultra.

The only glitch I noticed, the VRM fan is temperamental. Even after servicing, it doesn't always start on it own. It's spinning free, but sometimes it needs a little nudge, then it takes off....

When you spin it by hand without it being powered, do you see it slow down instantly or does it rotate freely and slowly come to a stop, with a bit of wobble at the end? If the former, you might want to try switching it to machine oil. I've had problems with sleeve bearing fans starting when using grease for the lubricant. If that's not the case, maybe check/replace the fan's driver IC (if easy enough to take apart only, of course.) Or maybe one set of windings is open on the stator?

That's all for today....I'll tackle that power supply next.....

Sweet!
Looking forward to the pics/recapping.

I have plenty of PC3200, but only in small denominations.....

Hey, nothing wrong even with just 4x 256 MB modules for a total of 1 GB. Back then, 1 GB was considered "rich" and would run pretty much everything. I don't remember anyone having more than 1 GB back in those days. Most people were still on 512 MB in the XP era... and the few cheap bastards like myself on 256 MB

I found a P4 Prescott 3.2GHz 1M L2! That should do it! I found a couple 3.4's, but priced more than I was willing to spend; cheapest was $100!! I got the 3.2GHz for $22. 200MHz from a netburst CPU will yield very little (if any) improvement, the 3.2 will be plenty!

WTFLOL?!??! These P4 CPU are now actually worth SOMETHING???!
4-5 years ago, you could literally get a pound of them on eBay for about $5. Sure those were the "scrap" CPUs, meant for gold smelting and whatnot, which meant you'd get a bucket full of CPUs with bent pins and dirty with thermal compound. But you could find some "gems" that way.

That's how I got my two 3.2 GHz P4 Prescotts. I plan on installing one in my current Optiplex 170L as a "retirement gift" ... though I might actually do that soon, just to get a little more use out of it. Not sure if the extra 400 MHz will net me much, though. The other is planned for an Optiplex GX270 build, since it has an AGP slot.

Anyways, the only reason I bought one of these scrap CPU lots before was because I saw an A8-6600k CPU in it and wanted to build an FM2 PC. At the time, the A8 CPUs were going for quite a bit still, so I figured if I just fix the pins, I'd have a good working CPU. Unfortunately, that did not happen. Of all the CPUs that I got in that lot (mostly Pentium 4's, but also a few socket 462's), the A8 AMD CPU was the only one that -didn't- work. LOL.

But I guess with these crazy prices for the P4 CPUs, that's OK. If I sell just one of them for $20, I'd have gotten all of my money back from that auction, plus some more.

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

I would never put it in storage, too hot

I also have a voodoo 3 2000

Have you heard of glide wrappers? I used it to play Descent III. You can actually wrap it for the vulkan API

Yea, a lot of enthusiasts created them after the fall of 3DFX to make glide games run on non-3DFX cards; the only prerequisite is the card support OpenGL, which pretty much all better ones did....for example, Diablo2....which was written for Glide acceleration and performed horrible on D3D. The Glide wrapper allows it to run in Glide (through switches at startup) even on modern hardware, and it plays beautiful! The only GPU's I've seen wrappers not play nice with are embedded Intel HD / IGP's.

For games natively supported by glide, on a 3DFX card you wouldn't need this. You wouldn't be running your 3DFX cards on anything newer than XP, and XP drivers for 3DFX were sketchy at best, as they got bought out very early in the XP era....wasn't a lot of support. Win2k is a great OS for your 3DFX cards.

[Uranium-235]

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

It would be close enough. If the hardware is ~a year or so apart, it works. The voodoo3 is the best all-around 3dfx GPU; and is my favorite. It would play all the glide games smoothly at resolutions appropriate for them at the time. The V5500 would too, at higher resolutions....but most of those old games weren't intended to be ran that high, and had other issues that went along with it; such as text being way too small....but they would run none the less.... I have one V5 system here, just for nostalgic reasons I suppose.....but the crazy money people think these are worth is getting absurd.....but supply & demand I suppose; they don't make 'em anymore!!

If you're running your V5 instead of it sitting in a stinky storage unit, my soul is happy for it.

I would never put it in storage, too hot

I also have a voodoo 3 2000

Have you heard of glide wrappers? I used it to play Descent III. You can actually wrap it for the vulkan API

There actually is a guy that has remade several of the old Voodoo cards.
It can be done because there was a surplus of VSA chips left over when 3Dfx went bankrupt
They can be bought in the hundreds on auction sites still today...

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/t...eering.278724/

Yeah I heard someone made a V5 6000 with four VSA chips

[Topcat]

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

There actually is a guy that has remade several of the old Voodoo cards.
It can be done because there was a surplus of VSA chips left over when 3Dfx went bankrupt
They can be bought in the hundreds on auction sites still today...

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/t...eering.278724/

If "anthony" ever decided to market those, they would sell faster than he could build them..... I'm guessing he's not probably because of ownership issues....but impressive none the less!

[Per Hansson]

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

they don't make 'em anymore!!

There actually is a guy that has remade several of the old Voodoo cards.
It can be done because there was a surplus of VSA chips left over when 3Dfx went bankrupt
They can be bought in the hundreds on auction sites still today...

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/t...eering.278724/