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    Upgrading my work computer

    Had this idea bouncing around for a while, and now i got, well, stumbled upon the resources to make it work.

    Currently, the computer i use at work is a Q6600 on a crappy intel 965 desktop board that i overclock with setfsb, 3GB of DDR2 667 RAM, couple random HDDs and a 60GB Kingston V300 SSD that recently found its place in there after our boss gave my coworker a 128GB one. I was too lazy to bother cleaning up Windows and reinstalling it on the SSD, so it currently holds just the pagefile, Mozilla and my VMs. Oh, and the display device is a ghetto modded Geforce 9400, with a laptop blower duct taped to its rear end as the old fan was busted.

    The whole thing is sitting into a HP dc7600 tower case and still using the original power supply - and that was again an upgrade of the old system i first found when i got there! Cutting the old I/O shield out, which was integrated with the motherboard tray, was a royal pain btw. I kept the very nice tower style CPU cooler by AVC.

    The only nice thing about it is the Dell 2007WFP monitor i found lying around the company a couple years back, with a blown power supply. It only needs one voltage of 24 volts, and that's being supplied by a damaged universal laptop adapter which doesn't want to put out anything other than 27 volts anymore. Yes, i was too lazy to order a $3 controller chip and fix its original PSU. Hey, it works. I am using this on DVI both for the quality and also for keeping the VGA port free for testing other boards.

    Yesterday i stumbled upon this: http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/...D=640#overview
    It had been around for a while but i never bothered with it for some reason. Anyway, the problem with this was "no video output", and that was true for onboard graphics, but i plugged a GPU in the PCI-E slot and the board came to life! Upon closer investigation the IGP is not receiving power, this seems to be some sort of communication problem as there is nothing wrong electrically and the VRM does not even try to turn on. But either way, i could care less about that, i will be using discrete graphics. So, i have a board!
    I have replaced a couple lytics in critical areas with polys just for peace of mind but most of it will be staying like it is.

    There is one other thing wrong with this board - it bluescreens when trying to install Win10 with UEFI, and does not post anymore if i set "Launch CSM" to "Never", requiring a clear CMOS. This may have something to do with the fact that i tested with old GPUs which do not have UEFI BIOS... Nonetheless, Windows installed fine in "legacy" mode, i ran a few stability tests and everything's good.

    My boss supplied me with 8GB DDR3 1600, one Adata and one Corsair VS. These have also been in my coworker's computer, who asked for different RAM because his board would refuse to POST with both memory sticks installed every time the power went out, requiring him to pull them out, start with only one stick and then power off and put the other back in. The new memory does the same. I updated the BIOS on that board last time while he was away, but we didn't have any power cuts since to see if that did anything.

    The CPU i tested this board with was a Pentium G620. Definitely not what i had in mind. I found an i7-3770 (non-K) for a bargain price on local classifieds and that's due to arrive tomorrow. A locked CPU is fine as i don't expect that little toy board to overclock anyway, and as a general idea, that i7 will set me back the same price of an i5-3570k, while coming with 4 extra threads and 2MB more cache. My boss offered to pay for the CPU, which is very nice.

    Since i want to get a larger monitor in the near future, i thought keeping the Geforce 9400 would be a bit ridiculous. With no money out of my own pocket so far, i have decided to spend $77 on a R9 270x 2GB that a guy working at the company next to us has for sale. A friend of mine was supposed to buy that card and we tested it, but he decided against it because it made too much noise under load. That noise comes with 45C FurMark temperature tho - so i don't mind that one bit. Also with my usual workloads it is unlikely that i will even get the fan to spin up at all - i'm not mining or gaming. Hmm... mining.

    I will be keeping the HP case but replacing the power supply with a FSP 500W 80 Plus Bronze which we pulled from some name-brand computer a while back - only thing wrong with it was a seized fan. The power supply in the HP would still be fine, but there's not enough connectors on it to accomodate two PCI-E 6-pin adapters and still keep all the drives, and this FSP is just lying around anyway. It has two PCI-E 6-pin connectors native.

    For OS install, i will be picking up the cheapest 120/128GB SSD that isn't Adata or Kingston. I could use that little V300 but 1) it's too small, 2) it's too crappy, 3) i would like to keep it for testing laptops that come into the shop without drives in them, as installing Windows and benchmarks on crusty laptop spinners is very time-consuming.
    A few weeks back i picked up a really nice Samsung 128GB SSD (forgot the model, sorry, it was a Lenovo OEM part) for $38.50, that was for a laptop i sold. I had saved the guy's number and he happens to have another 128GB drive for sale for the same price but forgot what it is, i asked him to message me some specs and we'll see if it's nice enough for me to take that off his hands as well.

    The only other thing i need to find is a cooler for socket 1150, currently on it there's that tiny stock cooler Intel bundles with their CPUs, which does fine for the little Pentium but i'm sure will be completely inadequate for the i7. That's still TBD.

    Any comments appreciated.
    Last edited by Th3_uN1Qu3; 08-24-2017, 01:47 PM. Reason: bolded some text
    Originally posted by PeteS in CA
    Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
    A working TV? How boring!

    #2
    Re: Upgrading my work computer

    Sweeeet mate, I much prefer builds like this than new ones.
    I've not hear the Biostar name for quite a while but hey free
    I think bluescreen with Windows 10 is a sign and 7 is the way to go.

    If I wasn't saving for a Rulolut this thread would be making me upgrade this PC, damn you !

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Upgrading my work computer

      Well i haven't built a desktop PC in years, been thru various laptops mostly, but a desktop PC makes a lot more sense at work. Anyway, this was long due. The Q6600 was a great CPU but it's getting a bit long in the tooth, and 965 chipset boards sucked for overclocking even when they were new, even the fancy ones, let alone this crappy locked Intel one.

      I think the reason i avoided taking a look at that Biostar board was that it looks ridiculously lame, and didn't think it would be of some use, but i guess it does have a future. One funny thing is it runs the DDR3 memory at 1.65v - reported in BIOS and double checked with my multimeter - and there are no voltage adjustments in the BIOS. Either this is a resistor tolerance issue, or they purposely increased the voltage for stability reasons - their routing was too crap. . It does have full manual memory timings though, so a little tweaking might be possible thanks to the extra voltage. The memory does not get even warm so i'll probably leave the voltage alone.

      One could argue that hey, i'm only browsing the internet, looking and schematics and boardviews and flashing BIOSes, like what would i need something like that for, but even just scrolling thru a complex PDF while having lots of browser tabs open requires a bit of processing power. Especially since i'm contemplating moving to a ultra wide 2k+ monitor. The larger the area you can see at one time, the better.

      Here's something else that will make you envious - i currently have a Lenovo Y50-70 with i7-4710HQ and GTX 860M as my laptop. It needs an IPS screen upgrade as the stock 1080p TN is bloody awful (especially for its price range), but hey, this was (almost) free. It cost me one extra stick of RAM and the power brick. The SSD i already had. One thing i hate about it is that it has only one SATA port, you need to hang an external drive off it for extra storage. And no m.2 either.

      The repair on this is an awesome mix between precision and ghetto - motherboard had a hole burned into it. Luckily i had a schematic. I'd cleaned up the burnt area quite a while ago but did not have enough time to spend on it for another few months. One Saturday i decided to have a go at it. Wires running everywhere and lots of "green shit" (conformal coating). Everything's soldered to this board except RAM and SSD, so i was pretty amazed when the thing not only powered up and showed video, but booted fully stable. Been using it since. Battery's good on it as well. The failure itself is a funny story i will share some other time.

      I've had this running for a few months now, i haven't posted it yet because i need to take it apart again to clean up the wiring on the top side of the board, and maybe fix the LAN controller i haven't bothered with yet. There's wifi everywhere nowadays so the lack of wired connectivity isn't that concerning anymore.

      But anyway, that's for another thread.
      Last edited by Th3_uN1Qu3; 08-24-2017, 04:02 PM.
      Originally posted by PeteS in CA
      Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
      A working TV? How boring!

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Upgrading my work computer

        I'm happy with my Latitude E64something, i5 and it has a lighty up keyboard and stands me at very little. Runs a 60GB Intel SSD but it's a tight squeeze.
        I have a pair of Dell 27" U2711 running at 2560x1440 that stand me at £51 so the envy is minimal.
        I bought some of that Chemtronics green epoxy 6g for £25 ! fark !! For special jobs requiring rework afterwards, otherwise I use some clear stuff that's far cheaper.

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Upgrading my work computer

          Yeah that Chemtronics stuff ain't cheap, i've yet to use it up and i think we bought it last year, but i don't really use it a lot.

          Lighty up keyboard here too, but honestly, it kinda sucks. Definitely not "Accutype" like they're bragging. A far cry from the Thinkpads. Even the old-ish 1st gen i5 elitebooks that i got off ebay uk and resold here had a much better keyboard. It's really a midrange gaming laptop in a slim chassis, with the expected compromises. The single SATA port with no m.2 slot really kills it though.

          I'm looking to tidy this machine up and sell it so i can get something with more expansion option like an used Dell Precision or HP Elitebook. But i have it and it works, so i use it and try not to complain much. Got a decent gaming GPU in it, installed the only game i really wanted to play, but i haven't had time to even touch it in like 2 months, so youtube is the most load it's seeing.

          Last edit: Tomorrow, you will have pics! Nice clear ones, as i've gotten myself a Lumia 930 about 1.5 months ago. So you can see the mess that is my workbench and plenty of ghetto bodges in lots of glorious megapixels.
          Last edited by Th3_uN1Qu3; 08-24-2017, 04:35 PM.
          Originally posted by PeteS in CA
          Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
          A working TV? How boring!

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Upgrading my work computer

            A little preview... Excuse the yellowness, white balance's a bit off due to the row of 50x 1W warm white LEDs that i have installed above my workbench a few months back.

            I had a tricky trace repair job which needed good light to do, and i put everything else on hold for 2 days while i built this lighting fixture. I had the LEDs lying around for like 1 year before that, shame on me! When i first turned them back off i couldn't figure out how i'd done without them.
            Attached Files
            Originally posted by PeteS in CA
            Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
            A working TV? How boring!

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Upgrading my work computer

              CPU arrived. All good. It cost $109 including postage cost. Quite a steal for this chip. Managed to fix the white balance setting of the camera. As you can see there is now a heatsink saying "ASRock" on the right of the CPU cooler. The stock heatsink of the PCH was tiny and i thought it ran too hot, so i hacked that to fit. Required a bit of grinding and drilling and it's a tight fit, but the end result looks great.

              One extra mention - i replaced all remaining large lytics with polies. I left the small lytics alone. Trouble is, i had four 6.3v caps of which 3 were on 5v rails, and i had exactly zero 6.3v rated poly caps, all i had were 4v. I ran a leakage test on them at 5.3v and they stabilized between 200 and 300 uA, which is a bit high, but nothing to worry much about. So yes, i stuck in poly caps rated for 4 volts on a 5 volt rail. Don't try this at home kids. It has been working fine for about 5 hours and none of the caps get even warm, but if something goes pop one day, i'll know what it is.

              Will pick up the SSD tonight, it's another Samsung PM851, just like the first one i bought off this guy. Now i remember what it was.

              Then we will have assembly into the case and i'll be all set for the next couple years.
              Attached Files
              Last edited by Th3_uN1Qu3; 08-25-2017, 10:11 AM.
              Originally posted by PeteS in CA
              Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
              A working TV? How boring!

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Upgrading my work computer

                Got the PM851 SSD and done installing to it, this system was small enough to fit in my laptop bag so i took it home. Sans case, of course. Looks like there are some advantages to those lame little motherboards after all.

                Turns out the R9 270x was either throttling heavily in the old Q6600 PC or it was just plain lying about temperature in the FurMark test - i installed Unigine Heaven on this and it shot up to 100C in less than 10 seconds! No wonder the fan was screaming. The guy who sold it to me told me he'd repasted it - with cheap white goop that had already dried out, of course... An unprofessional application of MX-2 later (i've already had 2 beers) and it's down to a much more reasonable 75C maximum.

                Fan still goes loud but not obnoxious. I'm looking to find a fan replacement though, it's unpleasantly rattly at higher rpm. I took it off and it appears to be a sealed bearing type so it cannot be lubed. There is also quite a bit of coil noise but it appears rarely, and in specific displays that are not FPS limited.

                No coil noise with regular desktop and video playback activity, and the card idles at a cool 33C. So that's all good so far. Some more youtube and i'll be off to sleep.
                Last edited by Th3_uN1Qu3; 08-25-2017, 03:22 PM.
                Originally posted by PeteS in CA
                Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
                A working TV? How boring!

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Upgrading my work computer

                  Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                  A little preview... Excuse the yellowness, white balance's a bit off due to the row of 50x 1W warm white LEDs that i have installed above my workbench a few months back.

                  I had a tricky trace repair job which needed good light to do, and i put everything else on hold for 2 days while i built this lighting fixture. I had the LEDs lying around for like 1 year before that, shame on me! When i first turned them back off i couldn't figure out how i'd done without them.
                  Pics!

                  Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                  One extra mention - i replaced all remaining large lytics with polies. I left the small lytics alone. Trouble is, i had four 6.3v caps of which 3 were on 5v rails, and i had exactly zero 6.3v rated poly caps, all i had were 4v. I ran a leakage test on them at 5.3v and they stabilized between 200 and 300 uA, which is a bit high, but nothing to worry much about. So yes, i stuck in poly caps rated for 4 volts on a 5 volt rail. Don't try this at home kids. It has been working fine for about 5 hours and none of the caps get even warm, but if something goes pop one day, i'll know what it is.
                  Overclocking caps, now that's something!

                  Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                  Will pick up the SSD tonight, it's another Samsung PM851, just like the first one i bought off this guy. Now i remember what it was.
                  Be sure to check the performance of that drive, it might be abysmal!
                  If so it requires a secure erase and then it will be good for a couple of months
                  https://www.techspot.com/article/997...e-degradation/
                  "The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it."

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Upgrading my work computer

                    The drive is perfectly fine. It boots ridiculously fast even in legacy mode, haven't timed it but will do, it's pretty impressive.

                    I did some benchmarking, tweaking and then more benchmarking and a little gaming. Keeping myself busy while my girlfriend is away. I played around with the memory timings and did a small overclock to the GPU, from 1030/1400 (interesting, as this card was supposed to have a stock core clock of 1080MHz) to 1120/1540. It will not do a lot more than that. On the upside, it is not reaching the power limit and temperatures did not rise by any significant amount.

                    I am slightly worried about the FSP power supply having a low 12v rail. It is 11.43v when the power supply is started by itself, hovers around the 11.8 mark when the system is idling and 11.51V at the PCI-E connector when the GPU is under high load. Similar can be seen at the other connectors, it is not an issue of the cable being too thin and dropping a lot of voltage, it's just consistently low. It never reaches 12 volts at all.

                    There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it, i've scoped it and ripple is very low, so despite it having CapXon capacitors in it, i don't think that's got to do anything with this issue. It has some trimpots inside but none of them seem to affect the output voltage. At the same time, the 5V rail is just barely edging ATX spec at 5.24-5.25V. It likely needs more 5V load to stay in spec, we'll see how it does once the hard drives are connected. It came out of a fairly modern Acer PC so that's kinda surprising.
                    Attached Files
                    Originally posted by PeteS in CA
                    Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
                    A working TV? How boring!

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: Upgrading my work computer

                      Try doing a read test using HD Tune.
                      As I explain in my article linked above the performance deficiency only affects old data on the disk.
                      This may be rectified by a clean install of Windows, but only if the installer issues TRIM to all LBA's.
                      Which I've found is not always the case.
                      http://www.hdtune.com
                      Last edited by Per Hansson; 08-27-2017, 02:47 AM.
                      "The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it."

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: Upgrading my work computer

                        The drive is limited by the SATA II interface on this mainboard anyway, so i am not very concerned about performance issues. It does 500+ MB/s on SATA III. It is just going to hold the OS and a few virtual machines. These get updated all the time so the performance drop with old data is a non-issue for my use.

                        Any old data and backups will be on spinning disks, for two reasons, first is i have way too much stuff to comfortably fit in 128 gigs, secondly, SSDs are a pain to recover data from if they fail. There will also be a weekly backup set up which will go on the data recovery computer, there's 4TB worth of data storage spinners on there with another two 2TB drives that get connected as needed. One of the permanent drives in the machine is a 1TB one which also holds various programs and OS images, so not enough space for DR jobs on that one but plenty for backups.

                        I am more concerned about the low 12v on this PSU, this is a nice unit and i would like to use it, so what i'll probably end up doing is taking apart the transformer and adding an extra turn on the 12 volt output winding.
                        Last edited by Th3_uN1Qu3; 08-27-2017, 03:51 AM.
                        Originally posted by PeteS in CA
                        Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
                        A working TV? How boring!

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: Upgrading my work computer

                          Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                          Currently, the computer i use at work is a Q6600 on a crappy intel 965 desktop board
                          ...
                          The whole thing is sitting into a HP dc7600 tower case and still using the original power supply
                          Is the motherboard the original one that came with the DC7600 tower? Reason I ask is because I have a stock HP DC7700 board (made by Intel) that has a i965 chipset, but it won't work with a Q6600 - boards POSTs successfully, but then it complains CPU is unsupported and stops there.

                          Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                          Since i want to get a larger monitor in the near future, i thought keeping the Geforce 9400 would be a bit ridiculous. With no money out of my own pocket so far, i have decided to spend $77 on a R9 270x 2GB that a guy working at the company next to us has for sale.
                          I would not put that GPU in a work computer. High-end GPUs tend to be problematic.

                          Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                          The only other thing i need to find is a cooler for socket 1150, currently on it there's that tiny stock cooler Intel bundles with their CPUs, which does fine for the little Pentium but i'm sure will be completely inadequate for the i7. That's still TBD.
                          You bet!

                          Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                          One funny thing is it runs the DDR3 memory at 1.65v - reported in BIOS and double checked with my multimeter - and there are no voltage adjustments in the BIOS. Either this is a resistor tolerance issue, or they purposely increased the voltage for stability reasons - their routing was too crap. .
                          Ah, so they are doing this even on their newer motherboards... that's interesting.

                          Even back in the days with their first DDR boards, you couldn't find a Biostar motherboard that wouldn't run the DDR RAM at less than 2.65V. I have two newer boards myself here: an NF325-A7 (socket 754) and a GeForce 6100-M9 (socket 939). Both run the DDR RAM at no less than 2.65V (both in BIOS and verified with multimeter, like you). I also have two socket AM2/+ boards with DDR2. I haven't played much with those yet, so I can't if they overvolt the RAM or not, but I'm pretty sure they do.

                          Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                          As you can see there is now a heatsink saying "ASRock" on the right of the CPU cooler. The stock heatsink of the PCH was tiny and i thought it ran too hot, so i hacked that to fit. Required a bit of grinding and drilling and it's a tight fit, but the end result looks great.
                          Nice!

                          That's how the stock cooler should have been to start with anyways. I hate hot chipsets, as they tend to kill themselves over time.

                          Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                          One extra mention - i replaced all remaining large lytics with polies. I left the small lytics alone. Trouble is, i had four 6.3v caps of which 3 were on 5v rails, and i had exactly zero 6.3v rated poly caps, all i had were 4v. I ran a leakage test on them at 5.3v and they stabilized between 200 and 300 uA, which is a bit high, but nothing to worry much about. So yes, i stuck in poly caps rated for 4 volts on a 5 volt rail.
                          Holy crap!

                          And I thought using 4V caps on a 3.3V rail was cutting it too close.

                          Better keep an eye on the 5V rail on that PSU - don't want even a few hundreds of mV higher lol.

                          Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                          Turns out the R9 270x was either throttling heavily in the old Q6600 PC or it was just plain lying about temperature in the FurMark test - i installed Unigine Heaven on this and it shot up to 100C in less than 10 seconds! No wonder the fan was screaming. The guy who sold it to me told me he'd repasted it - with cheap white goop that had already dried out, of course... An unprofessional application of MX-2 later (i've already had 2 beers) and it's down to a much more reasonable 75C maximum.
                          Or maybe that has something to do with how badly dented the heatpipes are on that R9 270???

                          Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                          I played around with the memory timings and did a small overclock to the GPU, from 1030/1400 (interesting, as this card was supposed to have a stock core clock of 1080MHz) to 1120/1540. It will not do a lot more than that. On the upside, it is not reaching the power limit and temperatures did not rise by any significant amount.
                          Temperature is no longer the #1 enemy of these newer video cards. But electron migration certainly is.

                          If you want it to last, you probably need to underclock it and undervolt it down to less than 1V on the core. Not sure if the same needs to be done with the memory too, but usually I don't touch memory voltages and timings at all. If the datasheet says run the RAM at x.xx volts, then do that and nothing more or less.

                          Anyways, cool build!
                          Looks like you are enjoying yourself with it too, and thats always good.
                          Last edited by momaka; 09-01-2017, 06:37 PM.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: Upgrading my work computer

                            Originally posted by momaka View Post
                            Is the motherboard the original one that came with the DC7600 tower? Reason I ask is because I have a stock HP DC7700 board (made by Intel) that has a i965 chipset, but it won't work with a Q6600 - boards POSTs successfully, but then it complains CPU is unsupported and stops there.
                            No, it wasn't the original board, for the same reason you encountered. And it was a 945, not a 965 IIRC. But still, it should have worked. They have been artificially limited so they don't.

                            Originally posted by momaka View Post
                            Ah, so they are doing this even on their newer motherboards... that's interesting.

                            Even back in the days with their first DDR boards, you couldn't find a Biostar motherboard that wouldn't run the DDR RAM at less than 2.65V. I have two newer boards myself here: an NF325-A7 (socket 754) and a GeForce 6100-M9 (socket 939). Both run the DDR RAM at no less than 2.65V (both in BIOS and verified with multimeter, like you). I also have two socket AM2/+ boards with DDR2. I haven't played much with those yet, so I can't if they overvolt the RAM or not, but I'm pretty sure they do.
                            An interesting bit of history there.

                            Originally posted by momaka View Post
                            And I thought using 4V caps on a 3.3V rail was cutting it too close.

                            Better keep an eye on the 5V rail on that PSU - don't want even a few hundreds of mV higher lol.
                            Again, i don't recommend anyone doing this, but it's been working perfectly so far.

                            Originally posted by momaka View Post
                            Or maybe that has something to do with how badly dented the heatpipes are on that R9 270???
                            Nah, they're fine, pretty sure that's how they've been from the factory. However, the surface that was in contact with the GPU was not perfectly flat, the heatpipes were sticking out just a little from the aluminum block. Took a piece of sandpaper to it. Didn't have the patience to make it perfectly flat, but it's a whole lot better now.

                            Originally posted by momaka View Post
                            Temperature is no longer the #1 enemy of these newer video cards. But electron migration certainly is.
                            I'll have to give that the benefit of the doubt.

                            Originally posted by momaka View Post
                            Looks like you are enjoying yourself with it too, and thats always good.
                            Thank you.

                            Anyway, forgot the completed build pics... I put a 120mm Yate Loon fan recovered from some PSU to push some extra air onto the graphics card and prevent its fan from revving up to an annoying whine. The 120mm fan is running at 7 volts from the PSU.

                            And my curiosity got the best of me - after trying a few other fans i had lying around, which were either a poor fit or not enough rpm to keep this thing cool, i poked my tweezers in the middle of the apparently sealed plastic casing of the fan on the Club3D R9 270X It actually revealed a conventional bearing which could be lubed! I no longer have to bear the grinding noise, yay!

                            Load temperature at 1140/1495 core/mem clocks is 64-65C, with the fan running at 2200 rpm. 41% says the card, but the fan's max speed is around 3400 rpm so the speed increments that the card reports do not correlate in any meaningful way with the actual RPM.

                            Anyway. That's it for now. Summer is gone so the CPU heatsink can wait until next year. And yes, this build is running case closed. Don't want the dust bunnies to visit me too often.
                            Attached Files
                            Originally posted by PeteS in CA
                            Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
                            A working TV? How boring!

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Re: Upgrading my work computer

                              Wow, you weren't kidding when you said how ghetto modded this is!
                              I think we may need to hand out the ghetto mod award a little earlier this year, as this is probably a winner.

                              Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                              But still, it should have worked. They have been artificially limited so they don't.
                              Yep, from what I've read i965 has no problem with Q6600. But in my case, the custom HP BIOS is what is limiting it. I couldn't find any hacked BIOSs with updated microcode either. Oh well, I guess that board shall burn in hell when I put a 130W Pentium D in it.
                              ...
                              Or maybe not? I've had an interesting idea about a home-brew liquid cooling setup with a car radiator.

                              Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                              Nah, they're fine, pretty sure that's how they've been from the factory.
                              Well, I've never seen a new GPU come out of the box like that. Heck, even the refurb units at the store I worked never looked like that.

                              Your heatpipes don't look completely destroyed, but being pinched like that probably does reduce their efficiency. Most likely why your fans are always running high on the GPU (that, and the fact that the R9 GPUs are hot mofos too).

                              Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                              I'll have to give that the benefit of the doubt.
                              Well, there is nothing else that explains why a GPU like that dies when all it does is sit idle on the desktop. Seen quite a few customers that were not gamers but purchased a PC with one of these (or an equivalent nVidia), and their PC came back for repair in a year or so due to the GPU crapping out. From what I could tell, the didn't have any 3D rendering software that stressed the card. One guy in particular only used the PC for browsing.
                              The only similar pattern I saw in all of those PCs was that they all didn't have the GPU drivers installed for some reason, so the GPU was running at maximum core voltage all the time (though not under maximum load, which I confirmed as the GPU heatsink was barely warm).

                              So putting 2 and 2 together, it has to be electron migration. And it makes sense, considering the low-nm fab. tech these GPUs are made on. Anything over 1.1V is absolutely immediately dangerous to the GPU core.


                              Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                              Anyway, forgot the completed build pics... I put a 120mm Yate Loon fan recovered from some PSU to push some extra air onto the graphics card and prevent its fan from revving up to an annoying whine. The 120mm fan is running at 7 volts from the PSU.
                              Nice, I like the front-to-back airflow inside the case that way. I tried that on one of my PCs as well, and it worked fairly well. Would have probably worked a lot better if my PC had bigger intake vents on the front (it barely had any)

                              Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                              And my curiosity got the best of me - after trying a few other fans i had lying around, which were either a poor fit or not enough rpm to keep this thing cool, i poked my tweezers in the middle of the apparently sealed plastic casing of the fan on the Club3D R9 270X It actually revealed a conventional bearing which could be lubed! I no longer have to bear the grinding noise, yay!
                              Yes, even most sealed fans use a "conventional" sleeve bearing. But the difference is how they close it. It used to be a plastic C-clip/washer holding the fan rotor assembly to the hub. But now they did away with that and it seems like they are using some kind of a "rivited" method, where the shaft expands somewhere in/after the bearing, so you can't pull it out like on a regular sleeve bearing fan. Even if you grind down on the shaft a few mm, it still won't come out (I've tried it already). That makes it pretty much impossible to open them completely. And lubing the fan from the back is at best a short temporary fix.

                              Also worth mentioning is that some fans will make grinding noises once you drill/remove the plastic to get to the bearing. This is because some fans have also a thin plastic sheet that limits how much the fan rotor can come down on the hub. With that plastic sheet removed and the bearing exposed, the fan rotor will sit much closer to the hub, and the front of the rotor assembly may start to grind on the stator coils and/or bearing sleeve up top.

                              Not sure if what I explained above makes sense, but I've seen this happen to quite a few fans. CD/DVD spindle drive motors are even worse, as they have an extra magnet in the rotor hub to keep the rotor hub steady and not go up (kind of important when you have a CD/DVD/BR disc spinning at high speed). If you drill/cut one of those in the back, some of them become pretty much done for, due to the rotor magnet hitting the bearing in the stator hub assembly. When I worked in the console repair shop a few years back, we had quite a few seized CD/DVD spindle motors, so that's when I opened a few and first saw this. Now they do the same with regular fans, which is kind of annoying.

                              In some cases, I've found that it is better to drill a few small holes in the top of the rotor assembly close to the shaft and insert oil/lube there rather than drill the fan from the back. However, the only downside is it takes much longer to work the oil into the bearing.

                              Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                              Anyway. That's it for now. Summer is gone so the CPU heatsink can wait until next year.
                              What's wrong with the CPU heatsink? Looks pretty decent. I myself got a similar Dell model with 8 copper heatpipes and think it's pretty awesome. Much cheaper than an equivalent aftermarket cooler too.

                              Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                              And yes, this build is running case closed. Don't want the dust bunnies to visit me too often.
                              Meh. Mine are running all open and there are no dust bunnies in them. It all depends on how clean the room is. If it's dirty, the PC will get dirty too.
                              Last edited by momaka; 09-07-2017, 09:33 AM.

                              Comment


                                #16
                                Re: Upgrading my work computer

                                Originally posted by momaka View Post
                                Wow, you weren't kidding when you said how ghetto modded this is!
                                I think we may need to hand out the ghetto mod award a little earlier this year, as this is probably a winner.
                                Well, the I/O shield of the original board was built into the mobo tray, and this being 1mm thick steel, required some brute force to modify.

                                I chopped off the shield part back when i put the Intel Desktop Board in. I was forced to cut off the supports for the socket 775 cooler when i installed this board as the mounting holes did not line up. Yes, this had a "built-in backplate" if you want to call it so.

                                Originally posted by momaka View Post
                                Yep, from what I've read i965 has no problem with Q6600. But in my case, the custom HP BIOS is what is limiting it. I couldn't find any hacked BIOSs with updated microcode either.
                                It is not a microcode issue. I have looked into it and a bunch of people have tried it and failed. They said something about the verification being in the compressed part of the BIOS. It is a Compaq bios so the commonly available Award or AMI BIOS tools will not work with it.

                                Originally posted by momaka View Post
                                Well, I've never seen a new GPU come out of the box like that. Heck, even the refurb units at the store I worked never looked like that.

                                Your heatpipes don't look completely destroyed, but being pinched like that probably does reduce their efficiency. Most likely why your fans are always running high on the GPU (that, and the fact that the R9 GPUs are hot mofos too).
                                I did look up an out-of-box photo of this card and you are right, they used to be a little more rounded. But given the diameter of these pipes, i doubt it matters much.


                                Originally posted by momaka View Post
                                The only similar pattern I saw in all of those PCs was that they all didn't have the GPU drivers installed for some reason, so the GPU was running at maximum core voltage all the time (though not under maximum load, which I confirmed as the GPU heatsink was barely warm).

                                So putting 2 and 2 together, it has to be electron migration. And it makes sense, considering the low-nm fab. tech these GPUs are made on. Anything over 1.1V is absolutely immediately dangerous to the GPU core.
                                Using a GPU without drivers installed, besides being counter-productive and pointless (you paid for it!), basically keeps all the power saving features turned off. Newer GPUs are a bit better in this regard, but until a few years ago, without drivers, it would be in max power state all the time. I know about electromigration and i know this exists, but i'm sure that thermals also had a play in this.

                                Originally posted by momaka View Post
                                Also worth mentioning is that some fans will make grinding noises once you drill/remove the plastic to get to the bearing. This is because some fans have also a thin plastic sheet that limits how much the fan rotor can come down on the hub. With that plastic sheet removed and the bearing exposed, the fan rotor will sit much closer to the hub, and the front of the rotor assembly may start to grind on the stator coils and/or bearing sleeve up top.
                                Or debris will enter the bearing. Can't prevent that, i'm afraid.

                                Originally posted by momaka View Post
                                In some cases, I've found that it is better to drill a few small holes in the top of the rotor assembly close to the shaft and insert oil/lube there rather than drill the fan from the back. However, the only downside is it takes much longer to work the oil into the bearing.
                                That is something to keep in mind.

                                Originally posted by momaka View Post
                                What's wrong with the CPU heatsink? Looks pretty decent. I myself got a similar Dell model with 8 copper heatpipes and think it's pretty awesome. Much cheaper than an equivalent aftermarket cooler too.
                                I wish i could have kept the HP heatsink, but socket 775 does not line up with socket 1155. That is why i had to chop off its screw supports from the motherboard tray. You can see there is a stock Intel cooler in the last pictures.
                                Last edited by Th3_uN1Qu3; 09-08-2017, 02:04 AM.
                                Originally posted by PeteS in CA
                                Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
                                A working TV? How boring!

                                Comment


                                  #17
                                  Re: Upgrading my work computer

                                  Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                                  Well, the I/O shield of the original board was built into the mobo tray, and this being 1mm thick steel, required some brute force to modify.
                                  Yeah, that's the nice thing about big-name OEM builds... or least the old ones anyways (the current HP and Dell "desktop" and "tower" cases are just empty tin boxes with a tiny laptop board inside.)

                                  Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                                  I was forced to cut off the supports for the socket 775 cooler when i installed this board as the mounting holes did not line up. Yes, this had a "built-in backplate" if you want to call it so.
                                  Well, better than nothing. And certainly better than the stupid push-pin design of the stock Intel coolers, which warp the crap out of your board. Not that AMD is better, even with their backplates (the backplate warps the board with it too) - but at least those are easy to mod with shims to raise the backplate in the center so the board is not warped. I do it all the time.

                                  Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                                  It is not a microcode issue. I have looked into it and a bunch of people have tried it and failed. They said something about the verification being in the compressed part of the BIOS. It is a Compaq bios so the commonly available Award or AMI BIOS tools will not work with it.
                                  Yes, from what I remember reading, that was exactly it.

                                  Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                                  Using a GPU without drivers installed, besides being counter-productive and pointless (you paid for it!), basically keeps all the power saving features turned off. Newer GPUs are a bit better in this regard, but until a few years ago, without drivers, it would be in max power state all the time. I know about electromigration and i know this exists, but i'm sure that thermals also had a play in this.
                                  Well, picture this:

                                  I have an R9 290. It is perfectly stable when the drivers are not installed, as this makes the core run at 1.0-1.1V. And like you said, the card throttles down the TDP/clocks to a fairly low level, even without the drivers (verified this with my Kill-A-Watt meter, as the PC was using around 30-50 Watts more from the wall with the card installed). Thus, the card still stays cool at the desktop.

                                  Now once I install the drivers, it's a different story. The card will artifact as soon as I get onto the Windows desktop and the drivers load to further throttle the GPU core clocks and voltages. Refreshing the desktop with F5 with bring it back to normal for a few moments, but it eventually goes all scrambled again once I try to do anything. From the quick few moments I had before the drivers loaded, I was able to see that the core was dropped to 900-and-something mV with the drivers.

                                  Now if the card had faulty BGA (be it between the board and GPU substrate or GPU substrate and core), I would have gotten those artifacts regardless of the drivers. Likewise, if it was the memory, the issue would have surfaced right away. The fact that video card works absolutely fine only when the video drivers are not installed usually points to a GPU/memory that is not getting enough voltage or too high clocks. So the solution is to flash the BIOS to give the card higher core voltages.

                                  I had someone here on the forums PM me and we had a discussion about video cards. He confirmed that the easiest way to get those cards going is to flash the BIOS with higher core voltages to get them going again for a while.

                                  Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                                  Or debris will enter the bearing. Can't prevent that, i'm afraid.
                                  Debris getting into the bearing is not an issue. By the time enough gets in there, it will be time to lube/oil the fan again, as the old lube would have either dried or dripped away.

                                  Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                                  I wish i could have kept the HP heatsink, but socket 775 does not line up with socket 1155. That is why i had to chop off its screw supports from the motherboard tray. You can see there is a stock Intel cooler in the last pictures.
                                  Ah yes, I got confused there. I see that you are running the stock now.

                                  Indeed 1155 and 775 holes don't line up, but sometimes you can easily mod the heatsink to work with either (in your case, it won't be easy at all, as those metal brackets on the heatsink are made of very tough steel - I broke/dulled many drill bits trying to drill into the steel brackets of Xbox 360 rev.2 CPU heatsinks). Also, some stock heatsinks can actually accommodate both. The Dell one that I have has rotate-able screw sockets, thus making it fit 115x sockets.
                                  Last edited by momaka; 09-08-2017, 10:49 AM.

                                  Comment


                                    #18
                                    Re: Upgrading my work computer

                                    Originally posted by momaka View Post
                                    Well, picture this:

                                    I have an R9 290. It is perfectly stable when the drivers are not installed, as this makes the core run at 1.0-1.1V. And like you said, the card throttles down the TDP/clocks to a fairly low level, even without the drivers (verified this with my Kill-A-Watt meter, as the PC was using around 30-50 Watts more from the wall with the card installed). Thus, the card still stays cool at the desktop.

                                    Now once I install the drivers, it's a different story. The card will artifact as soon as I get onto the Windows desktop and the drivers load to further throttle the GPU core clocks and voltages. Refreshing the desktop with F5 with bring it back to normal for a few moments, but it eventually goes all scrambled again once I try to do anything. From the quick few moments I had before the drivers loaded, I was able to see that the core was dropped to 900-and-something mV with the drivers.

                                    Now if the card had faulty BGA...
                                    No, it does not work like that. Running without drivers just gives you the most basic functionality of the card - delivering a video signal to a monitor. If that most basic section of the chip is still connected, the card will work in "failsafe" mode, but have the signal shatter to bits when you try to load drivers and enable the whole chip. The ASUS R9 270x i reballed was just like that. Worked fine in safe mode or with "microsoft basic" driver in w10. Went completely bonkers if you tried to load drivers. Reballed and it's fine.

                                    Most Bumpgate-era chips will run without drivers for a good while before they go all dead, too. I challenge you to try a reflow on that card. If you don't kill it, it will run with drivers. I'm 99% sure.

                                    Originally posted by momaka View Post
                                    Debris getting into the bearing is not an issue. By the time enough gets in there, it will be time to lube/oil the fan again, as the old lube would have either dried or dripped away.
                                    I was talking about debris from drilling into it.


                                    Originally posted by momaka View Post
                                    Ah yes, I got confused there. I see that you are running the stock now.
                                    Running a different stock cooler actually. Found one that was copper cored but for a different (newer?) socket and spent an unnecessary amount of time hacking it to fit with the same fan and push pins. Didn't take peak temps even 1C off, but it did help with averages. But that's a hack so ugly i don't even wanna picture it - at least i'm happy it still looks stock from a distance.
                                    Last edited by Th3_uN1Qu3; 09-08-2017, 01:58 PM.
                                    Originally posted by PeteS in CA
                                    Remember that by the time consequences of a short-sighted decision are experienced, the idiot who made the bad decision may have already been promoted or moved on to a better job at another company.
                                    A working TV? How boring!

                                    Comment


                                      #19
                                      Re: Upgrading my work computer

                                      lol u know, video cards can behave really weird when they fail. let me tell u about what i experienced.

                                      i bought a used radeon 9550 256mb video card off ebay and it turned out to be faulty. funny thing is, the picture is flawless without the drivers but once the drivers are loaded, artifacts slowly start appearing on the screen and get more and more until the screen is unviewable.

                                      on testing and troubleshooting, reducing the agp acceleration to 4x or off didnt work. it was only until i turned off agp acceleration, agp reads & writes and pci reads & writes that the artifacts stopped. so im guessing the video card has bad bga on one or more of the lines that connect to the agp bus. however, using the video card like that is like using it without the drivers. the screen was too laggy to do anything.

                                      since the card is artifact free at the bios screen, i can just use it as a sacrificial lamb test video card to see if a computer displays anything on the boot screen. if the mobo or psu is bad and blows up the video card, no big loss lol! hahaha!

                                      next, i have a radeon 9600 xt also from ebay. displays fine at the bios screen, also runs games in direct3d fine without artifacts but in 2d or directdraw mode, there are yellow and blue line artifacts acrosss the screen. however, i can watch tv and videos fine without artifacts. really weird... lol

                                      Comment


                                        #20
                                        Re: Upgrading my work computer

                                        Originally posted by Th3_uN1Qu3 View Post
                                        No, it does not work like that. Running without drivers just gives you the most basic functionality of the card - delivering a video signal to a monitor. If that most basic section of the chip is still connected, the card will work in "failsafe" mode, but have the signal shatter to bits when you try to load drivers and enable the whole chip. The ASUS R9 270x i reballed was just like that. Worked fine in safe mode or with "microsoft basic" driver in w10. Went completely bonkers if you tried to load drivers. Reballed and it's fine.

                                        Most Bumpgate-era chips will run without drivers for a good while before they go all dead, too.


                                        I confirm that.

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