Announcement

**keeney123** · 03-07-2022, 08:51 PM

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

What type of grease did you use to repack the GPU fan bearing? I ask because I had a similar problem with a House fan running slow. I am sure they are different bearings. With the house fan it has an oil impregnated sleeve they called a bearing and ended up being worn out by about 5 1/2 years. I then use Permatex anti-seize lubrication 80078 on the sleeve and the shaft. And the fan is still going 3/4 a year later. This lubricate holds up to 1600F but around 400F it starts to turn to a paste.

**Topcat** · 03-07-2022, 10:03 PM

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

Originally posted by keeney123 View Post

What type of grease did you use to repack the GPU fan bearing? I ask because I had a similar problem with a House fan running slow. I am sure they are different bearings. With the house fan it has an oil impregnated sleeve they called a bearing and ended up being worn out by about 5 1/2 years. I then use Permatex anti-seize lubrication 80078 on the sleeve and the shaft. And the fan is still going 3/4 a year later. This lubricate holds up to 1600F but around 400F it starts to turn to a paste.

Third paragraph in this post:

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...8&postcount=13

**keeney123** · 03-08-2022, 01:16 AM

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

Originally posted by Topcat View Post

Third paragraph in this post:

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...8&postcount=13

Zep 2000 is very popular. Even the manufacturer is out of stock. Interesting article. Thank you.
The anti-seize I was told by a Korean War Veteran Marine that anti-seize can be put underwater indefinitely and when one goes to undue it there is no problem even in salt water. I used SeaFoam penetrating oil to spray all the crude off.

**Topcat** · 03-08-2022, 01:19 AM

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

Originally posted by keeney123 View Post

Zep 2000 is very popular. Even the manufacturer is out of stock. Interesting article. Thank you.

No problem. Zep2k is wonderful stuff! Pricey, but a little goes a long way. It's probably out of stock for the same reason a lot of other things are.... I've been reviving fans with it for over a decade, I've never had to redo one again later on.

**keeney123** · 03-08-2022, 01:31 AM

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

Originally posted by Topcat View Post

No problem. Zep2k is wonderful stuff! Pricey, but a little goes a long way. It's probably out of stock for the same reason a lot of other things are.... I've been reviving fans with it for over a decade, I've never had to redo one again later on.

And this works on a house floor fan the same way?

**Topcat** · 03-08-2022, 01:40 AM

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

Originally posted by keeney123 View Post

And this works on a house floor fan the same way?

That I couldn't say...but I'd render a guess that if you can get this stuff into the bearings or sleeves, it would do fine.

**Dan81** · 03-08-2022, 03:00 AM

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

Welp, guess my 8IG1000 Pro + Prophet 3D 9700 Pro are no match for this monster

**Topcat** · 03-08-2022, 04:49 PM

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

I had to take this off the bench to work on other things....but before I did, I did some experimenting. The 2 extra RAM slots don't come without a little kryptonite. Even Gigabyte's site warns of this; slowdown in memory speed if the additional channel is used on each bank....so I wanted to see how much..... It drops from 200 to 160 per channel according to memtest....that's pretty significant. I also tested it with 4gb RAM, 2 1gb modules in each bank. POST screen sees 3.3gb. I found 4x 512mb OCZ PC3200 DIMMs in the pile, that has it at 2gb running @ full speed; 400MHz interleaved between both channels per bank....I'm fine with that. A gaming rig of this era running XP Pro and age-specific games will rip on this. More as this develops further.

**Dan81** · 03-08-2022, 05:27 PM

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

I've been reading your original post - your monster of a 8PENXP seems to have had Nichicons gone bad all around.

My 8IG1000 Pro surprisingly had only one HM go bad over the first DIMM slot. The rest of the board had OST RLS and RLX all round the CPU and AGP sections, and more OG HM caps inbetween PCI, ATX plug and right on the corner of the board, near the USB headers.

i just went ahead and yeet'd the hell out of every HM I could lay my eyes on, and put some 2007/08 OST RLX in their place. I figure those being 1000uF, they're usually okay for the most part (never had any go bad from these. None at all.).

Oh, and while doing a whole Texas Chainsaw Massacre out of those HMs, I also added some KZGs to the pile, installing some Ruby MBZ in their place on the mobo. Up next would probably be replacing the low VRM side with MBZs as well, though it seems whoever recapped it with OSTs didn't have any issues with it, and it's been an almost 24/7 running machine.

Tip: For the VRM fan (and any sleeve bearing fan for that matter), use some bicycle oil. I had to use such oil on my 8IG1000's fan and it quickly sprung back to life.

**Topcat** · 03-08-2022, 09:34 PM

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

Originally posted by Dan81 View Post

I've been reading your original post - your monster of a 8PENXP seems to have had Nichicons gone bad all around.

None were bloated, but all I checked were severely out of tolerance.

Originally posted by Dan81 View Post

i just went ahead and yeet'd the hell out of every HM I could lay my eyes on, and put some 2007/08 OST RLX in their place. I figure those being 1000uF, they're usually okay for the most part (never had any go bad from these. None at all.).

I polymodded mine where it counted....the rest done in Rubycon ZLH.

Originally posted by Dan81 View Post

Tip: For the VRM fan (and any sleeve bearing fan for that matter), use some bicycle oil. I had to use such oil on my 8IG1000's fan and it quickly sprung back to life.

I use grease in them. This fan seems to have some electrical issues.

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!

**Topcat** · 03-10-2022, 10:32 AM

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

I was scouting some parts last night for a customer build when I stumbled upon something very peculiar that would work on this build; which will take this build in a very different but neat direction!!

**Uranium-235** · 03-10-2022, 11:09 AM

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

A retro gaming system for me would be like a pentium 3 with a geforce 3. That is what I had in high school. 667/gf3 ti 200

though I would want to up it to a socket 370 vs the original slot 1.

Though it originally came with a voodoo 3 2000 agp. Maybe I could...run my 5500, it was released in 2000, about the same time as the computer I had.

too bad I can't put my geforce 4 4600 in it, it was in 2002, too late for the computer I had

would also have to put windows 98 on it lol

**Topcat** · 03-10-2022, 11:36 AM

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

Originally posted by Uranium-235 View Post

Though it originally came with a voodoo 3 2000 agp. Maybe I could...run my 5500, it was released in 2000, about the same time as the computer I had.

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.

**Per Hansson** · 03-10-2022, 03:20 PM

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

Originally posted by Topcat View Post

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/

**Topcat** · 03-10-2022, 04:45 PM

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

Originally posted by Per Hansson View Post

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!

**Uranium-235** · 03-10-2022, 09:51 PM

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

Originally posted by Topcat View Post

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

Originally posted by Per Hansson View Post

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** · 03-10-2022, 10:05 PM

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

Originally posted by Uranium-235 View Post

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.

**momaka** · 03-11-2022, 02:44 AM

Re: Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

Originally posted by Topcat View Post

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.)

Originally posted by Topcat View Post

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.

Originally posted by Topcat View Post

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.

Originally posted by Topcat View Post

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.

Originally posted by Topcat View Post

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

Originally posted by Topcat View Post

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?

Originally posted by Topcat View Post

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.

Originally posted by Topcat View Post

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".

Originally posted by Topcat View Post

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.

Originally posted by Topcat View Post

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.

Originally posted by Topcat View Post

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?

Originally posted by Topcat View Post

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

Sweet!
Looking forward to the pics/recapping.

Originally posted by Topcat View Post

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

Originally posted by Topcat View Post

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.

**Uranium-235** · 03-11-2022, 11:38 AM

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

Announcement

Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

Topcat's Ultimate Pentium 4 Retro Gamer!

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment