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[Topcat]

Ok, this one back in the news *again*!! ...but no system core swap this time. A few weeks ago, I was given an identical tower that had a factory Dell liquid cooling system in it. I never knew this was even an option for these, and thus it piqued my interest for this build....and I started looking for another of these coolers. Not easy to find with the Dell shroud that goes around it & proprietary mounts....but I finally found one complete for $30 shipped. There was a problem though, this system is now a LGA1366; not the LGA775 or AM2 as they were originally intended, so the cooling block brackets...

[Topcat]

CPU came the other day for this.....now we're cookin'!! I didn't even have to hack up hte BIOS to make this work....Dell quietly had the microcode in their BIOS for Xeons. Unusual for Dell...but perhaps done because it was their 'higher end' machine. Tested using air cooling.

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Now to test the liquid cooler.

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[Topcat]

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

The DL360 1U

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DL380 2U

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[Topcat]

Good drop off today!!

Two complete Nintendo systems; a NES classic and a Super NES. Yes, the mario bros 3 game is unopened.

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A Cobra 86XLR Base station with classic D104 Mic

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[Topcat]

RDRAM performed very well at the time versus PC100/133 and early DDR1 in the 400/533fsb P4 period....just a short-lived era; as Intel hosed RAMBUS over (or visa versa) with the very over-priced memory. RDRAM era hardware gets more rare every day. Love it or hate it, it has a place in the PC retro kingdom.

[Topcat]

Today's megascore is a Supermicro C7X99-OCE-F. Bought from one of the gazillion R2 resellers on ebay as "non functional, won't boot" for $25 shipped, in original box with accessories. Ok, that's worth the gamble, these are ~$200 boards working.

Arrived today, and of course the first thing is to check the 'usual suspects; such as damaged pins in the sockets, and other physical damage to the board, RAM slots, etc....none found. Next, in the oven with a CPU & RAM...and no post... Looking at status codes and current draws, it would roll through until '9C'....I was never...

[Topcat]

Nice. Someone dropped off a Dimension 8250 system a while back. Supports Northwoods (533FSB max) and RDRAM. I haven't done anything with it yet....but I didn't send it to the R2 scrappers either. ...

[Topcat]

Ok, thanks for the info. I don't plan on any overclocking....this one is more of a resto with a Xeon CPU mod; I won't overclock it....

[Topcat]

FSB holes>? What's that?

I found a pair of GTX 285's for peanuts....so I guess that cat is out of the bag!! ...

[Topcat]

Next build I'm kind of excited about. It was a drop off for recycling. Dell XPS 630i. These are slightly on the rare side....but this one was a little more unusual; as it's the red-faced one and also the liquid cooled version as well....I didn't even know the liquid cooler was an option with them. The GPU was missing and the PSU has bad caps....so it didn't work. Not sure what GPU it had....there were a quite a few GPU options with these, the best one being a GTX285; which probably won't be hard to find.

Testing the motherboard in the oven:

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[Topcat]

The final results of the above Coolermaster setup....

I won't go into all the gore....but here's the power distribution & switching controller for the lighting that allows the front panel on/off switch to be used. The wiring & connectors were harvested from junk TV's.

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Enclosed in a black box under the drive trays. The shell was an old power brick that I stripped out and...

[Topcat]

This was the leftover system after I snatched the Tableau Forensic bridge out of it for my data recovery station......so now to have some fun with it...............excuse the wire mess...it's all cobbled together in test form powered by my bench supply.

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[Topcat]

I have a sneaking suspicion... ...

[Topcat]

Had a few PC's dropped off last week... One of the picks was a Dell XPS 630 red-face. PSU doesn't work. is a C2Q 9650 @ 3GHz 4GB RAM. GPU & HDD was missing. Has the liquid cooler for the CPU, first one I've seen; I didn't know it was an option. Case is in mint condition. One of my favorite Aluminum cases from dell. It's full & standard ATX not that goofy BTX. Breathes amazingly well and is built like a tank. Weighs a ton, even for an aluminum.

[Topcat]

I know what your next score will be when it gets there...

[Topcat]

Both of these relics are still in operation...as a matter of fact, this message typed on the one built in 2010....so 14 years so far....

[Topcat]

I have 2 ricoh pinters, the one mentioned above and a C305 color laser (also given to me)....it was probably mentioned earlier in this thread; I've had it quite a few years. The C305 has performed perfect. I've done nothing to it other than feed it toner when it needed it. Makes no weird noises and is crazy reliable.

THis newest one, I can't speak for the reliability as of yet...I haven't had it long enough....but it's fast and prints stellar...and given its age (makde in 2019) and low page count, I see lots of life. I cleaned it before wheeling it inside, it didn't need much...

[Topcat]

Yesterday's megascore is a Ricoh MP 2555 document center. This was nearly 10 grand new. I carted it off along with some of the other usual stuff from a regular client; a medical company that gobbled up a smaller clinic...and they're bringing in all their own IT.... ebay prices has them around ~2500....but i'd never want to deal with shipping this, so I'll just use it in the front office and maybe see if I can get a local buyer....but it's one of those I don't care if I sell. Page count is 7800. No, I didn't leave off a zero.....7800 pages! This is easily a million-page machine!

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[Topcat]

Here's a 'Systemax' branded Chieftec

[url]https://www.ebay.com/itm/175492093873[/url]https://Here's a 'Systemax' branded ...92093873[/url]

[Topcat]

Again, nice work! I have the black iron version of this case...one of these days I'll make something with it....