865PE Neo2-P Platinum Edition It's aliveeee!!

[SIDMX]

Get this freebie from a friend a few months ago only thing he said was "that POS doesn't work", about a week ago i got some free time and decided to look at it, grabbed an old P4 Nortwood 1.6GHz, A-Data DDR400, a GF2 MX 420, WD 40GB IDE HD, new battery and a known good PSU HP-D3057F3R to test the board.

Nothing gets abnormally hot and it always turns on but not always post, sometimes doesn't beeps if no RAM or VGA is installed and a few times when turned on it turns off and back on 2 times before finally post.

Then i went for testing if vcore, vdimm and AGP voltages were present all the time, all were present and according to my DMM they were fine: 1.35v vcore, 2.53v vdimm and 1.51v for AGP, i've proceeded to go for a partial recap of just vcore and vdimm caps and it did resolve the on-off and no beeps issues, but was still very unstable.

Replaced the crystal oscillator near the clock generator (it looked really bad), but it didn't get better, so WTH full recap!! ...well, full recap using scrapped caps from several boards that are running perfect because i just want to know if this board can be saved from the dump. You can see some OST caps in some places and TK caps in VRM input, for VRM output i put some good Panasonic FL and a single Rubycon MCZ for vdimm.

Well finally all issues were gone (or so i thought) and i was able to install XP, so maybe some or all caps in NB, SB or AGP VRMs were bad (who knows), anyway i discover (or uncover) a new issue: board didn't holds bios settings if PSU is turned off, or disconnected in this case.

Rechecked battery ...3.19v so it is good then i put back the battery and proceded to check the voltage at cmos pins... bingo! 0 Volt, tried to trace the path back from cmos to battery holder and found 0 Volt all the way to the holder, visually inspected the holder and it looks good , i mean, it does show very very light dirt in the contacts but that is, after cleaning the contacts same result 0 Volt in the pins, so battery holder was replaced and it's done! 3.18V at cmos pins and finally get rid of all issues!!

Then stuffed the board with 3GHz P4 "Pres-hot", 2x512MB GeiL DDR 400 2-2-3-6, Radeon 9800 Pro and a WD 320GB SATA Drive, installed all drivers and some software, enabled PAT in Bios and ...oh boy! ...this thing bigtime ! Look at those RAM read speeds, they are pretty much in DDR2 lands!! I need better cooling, this thing is reaching mid 60's °C under heavy load easily, almost forgot how much heat this Prescott's generate!!

This board will be waiting for all new caps for at least 1 month, and will not be used until then.The board uses 8x 1800uf 6.3v 8x20mm KZG caps in VRM output so if i want to go poly i need to halve farads and keep the total ESR as close to or slightly under the original right? or ...is it safe to go below the original total ESR? Any feedback like recommended brand/series for recap, good and silent cooling for P4 or anything else will be really apreciated !

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: 865PE Neo2-P Platinum Edition It's aliveeee!!

Only read your last paragraph as i hate P4s. If you're serious about making that thing silent, a ThermalRight XP-120 is the way to go.

[mockingbird]

Re: 865PE Neo2-P Platinum Edition It's aliveeee!!

If we went back to 2003, you'd have a state of the art computer. IIRC, Intel invented a special interface for the onboard NIC to accomodate the extra bandwidth of gigabit ethernet.

[SIDMX]

Re: 865PE Neo2-P Platinum Edition It's aliveeee!!

... a ThermalRight XP-120 is the way to go.

Thanks for the input, I will try to get that one if I can, or maybe something similar.

If we went back to 2003, you'd have a state of the art computer.

Yes, too bad I'm 10 years late! , IIRC back on those days i was on the AMD wagon with an XP 2000+ Thoroughbred.

IIRC, Intel invented a special interface for the onboard NIC to accomodate the extra bandwidth of gigabit ethernet.

didn't know that.

[ant3202]

Re: 865PE Neo2-P Platinum Edition It's aliveeee!!

wow .... u gt a rare board made, with the joseph signature....

[momaka]

Re: 865PE Neo2-P Platinum Edition It's aliveeee!!

Then i went for testing if vcore, vdimm and AGP voltages were present all the time, all were present and according to my DMM they were fine: 1.35v vcore...

That's too low. Should have been an indicator of bad caps in Vcore. desktop Northwood and Prescott (S478) CPUs are all 1.5V. I overlooked this issue about 2 months ago on a crappy ECS P4IBMS board. Had no post and no beeps. Board acted totally dead. CPU Vcore was reading similar to yours 1.35V sometimes and 1.4V other times. I though the board was completely dead, but then I decided to recap it anyways despite all of the G-Luxon caps looking good. As soon as I did that, the board booted just fine.

This board will be waiting for all new caps for at least 1 month, and will not be used until then.The board uses 8x 1800uf 6.3v 8x20mm KZG caps in VRM output so if i want to go poly i need to halve farads and keep the total ESR as close to or slightly under the original right? or ...is it safe to go below the original total ESR?

In the CPU VRM (and generally all buck-type regulators), you can go below the ESR of the original caps. Actually, the reason the half-capacitance "rule" with polymers works is because the very low ESR of the polymers is able to make up for the lower capacitance in that circuit. So you don't necessarily have to go with half-capacitance per cap; you can have it higher. But with polymers it's no necessary. 820uF 2.5V polymer caps (like the ones that badcaps.net sells... i.e. these) should work fine, even though they are slightly below half the capacitance of the original.

Any feedback like recommended brand/series for recap, good and silent cooling for P4 or anything else will be really apreciated !

As far as cooling, I don't know any particular coolers to point you to, but I would say anything with a full thick copper base, copper fins, and possibly a heat pipe or two should keep that CPU cool. I tried a 2 GHz P4 Northwood CPU (it's a 52W TDP CPU) in my ECS P4IBMS after I fixed it, and with a copper CPU heat sink from an Xbox 360, it started topping out at around 40C without any fan cooling in a room at 20C. The copper CPU heat sink from the Xbox has copper base, copper fins, and a copper heat pipe, which is IMO why it did so well.

Yes, too bad I'm 10 years late!

Same here . I only fairly recently discovered the joy of HT. It's almost like having a true dual-core computer . Currently rocking a 2.8 GHz P4 Prescott in a Dell Optiplex 170L. Doesn't seem that great, but coming from sub-1 GHz Pentium 3's, it's FAST!
That said, I still do use my older computers though, like this old P3 laptop I'm using right now to type this post .

[SIDMX]

Re: 865PE Neo2-P Platinum Edition It's aliveeee!!

That's too low. Should have been an indicator of bad caps in Vcore...

Dammit! you're right I forgot to spec the processor before taking the read with DMM.

In the CPU VRM (and generally all buck-type regulators), you can go below the ESR of the original caps...

Thanks for the explanation, then i'm gonna use polys for CPU VRM.

The copper CPU heat sink from the Xbox has copper base, copper fins, and a copper heat pipe, which is IMO why it did so well.

Yeah, i'm looking for some copper too, tried to get an XP-120 as per uN1Qu3 suggestion but they are expensive and i don't want to spend that much right now, i'm supposed to have a TT Spark 7 lying somewhere here, but i can't find it ...yet.

...like this old P3 laptop I'm using right now to type this post .

what OS are you using? I've just recaped an Intel Board (D201GLY) with onboard CPU (Celeron M 215 @ 1.33GHz) and want to try a lightweight OS.

wow .... u gt a rare board made, with the joseph signature....

How is it rare? i haven't seen a lot of this boards but the 3 that i have seen all were identical to this.

[momaka]

Re: 865PE Neo2-P Platinum Edition It's aliveeee!!

what OS are you using? I've just recaped an Intel Board (D201GLY) with onboard CPU (Celeron M 215 @ 1.33GHz) and want to try a lightweight OS.

The usual: Windows XP Pro SP2. All visual (d)effects turned off, of course, and I have a custom Windows classic theme file that I put on all of my computers. Also, no Automatic Updates of any sort, be it Windows or whatever else. No AV either. It's pretty much a stock XP install with a ton of custom tweaks and fixes.

[SIDMX]

Re: 865PE Neo2-P Platinum Edition It's aliveeee!!

The usual: Windows XP Pro SP2. All visual (d)effects turned off, of course, and I have a custom Windows classic theme file that I put on all of my computers. Also, no Automatic Updates of any sort, be it Windows or whatever else. No AV either. It's pretty much a stock XP install with a ton of custom tweaks and fixes.

hmm...long time since SP2, I'll try and see how it does but I'm a little worried about worms, specially if no AV is present and IIRC that was a real PIA in those days. ...or was it with SP1?

uh-oh:

finally found it but looked ready for the trash can, where i live humidity is around 80% most of the year but sometimes it goes really high, in rain season it is above 90% and that can last for weeks, so I learned my lesson: "never store a heatsink without cleaning it first or without throwing some desiccant inside the box"

The fan was missing however i have a TaiSol fan (rebranded Delta) that can push 40cfm but it is as loud as the original so i need to test all my 70mm fans to find the best option.
I've done my best to get it clean but the clips were so much rusted, that aside i think it is pretty clean now.

TaiSol fan attached:

[Kiriakos GR]

Re: 865PE Neo2-P Platinum Edition It's aliveeee!!

Do not expect a gold metal for your cooler.


I still have the best of that era = Thermalright SLK900-U

[momaka]

Re: 865PE Neo2-P Platinum Edition It's aliveeee!!

hmm...long time since SP2, I'll try and see how it does but I'm a little worried about worms, specially if no AV is present and IIRC that was a real PIA in those days. ...or was it with SP1?

I've actually been looking into that for the past 2 weeks. For some reason, a lot of my SP2 systems keep getting this downadup flash-drive worm. I know that it's not coming from any of my flash drives since it relies on autorun.inf files and I have a registry hack that disables autorun.inf files from being executed. I'm thinking either Internet Explorer or some legacy "shady" software that I have from back in the early 2000's when download.com and other major software distributors didn't really look at their software if it contained spyware/adware/worms.

BTW, how did that heat sink work? I'm curious as I have a source of more of those Xbox 360 copper heat sinks I mentioned.

[SIDMX]

Re: 865PE Neo2-P Platinum Edition It's aliveeee!!

I've actually been looking into that for the past 2 weeks. For some reason, a lot of my SP2 systems keep getting this downadup flash-drive worm...

Sorry mate I've been busy and to be honest I really forgot to report back, truth is I got pretty much as you by the Conficker worm while trying XP-SP2, I just gave up, but i think is possible to stop that worm by using the free version of Avast AV, IIRC it's Network Shield module is pretty good blocking OS backholes.

BTW, how did that heat sink work? I'm curious as I have a source of more of those Xbox 360 copper heat sinks I mentioned.

I haven't done any testing yet, except for the 70mm fans, i think i'll be using the TaiSol fan, it's not as loud as the datasheet shows, i will be doing some tests in this weekend and will let you know how it perfoms, I really have high hopes in that cooler, beeing all coper with thick base i'm sure it will lower my load temps at least 5-8 °C.

[momaka]

Re: 865PE Neo2-P Platinum Edition It's aliveeee!!

Sorry mate I've been busy and to be honest I really forgot to report back

No worries and no need to apologize.

truth is I got pretty much as you by the Conficker worm while trying XP-SP2, I just gave up

Thank you! That link is quite useful. I think I will try the tricks Microsoft mentioned in that article to plug that hole. I just found today (with the info in that article) that my laptop had a scheduled task to run every day to re-infect itself.

Looks like XP SP3 is affected too, however. I think I better work out that method MS suggested so that I can remember it and do it on all PCs with XP.

I really have high hopes in that cooler, beeing all coper with thick base i'm sure it will lower my load temps at least 5-8 °C.

Definitely. I've seen smaller but similar all-copper heat sinks in HP DC5000 and D530 SFF boxes with squirrel-cage fans, and they still manage to keep the CPU cool just fine. (and those usually have P4 2.6-3.2 GHz Prescotts with HT).

[SIDMX]

Re: 865PE Neo2-P Platinum Edition It's aliveeee!!

...Thank you! That link is quite useful....

You're welcome!

Looks like XP SP3 is affected too, however. I think I better work out that method MS suggested so that I can remember it and do it on all PCs with XP.

Hope you get it sorted

[SIDMX]

Re: 865PE Neo2-P Platinum Edition It's aliveeee!!

Just finished testing the cooler, results exceeded my expectations a bit, load temps went down 10°C, from 65-67°C to 55-57°C
Core center shows CPU and 12V voltages unstable, but software readings are known to be very inaccurate, my dmm reads a steady 11.88V from 12V line under load and 12.00 in idle state as for the Vcore i could't take any readings because the test was made with motherboard inside a closed case to get realistic results, once i get new caps will do proper tests for Vcore if required.

Looks like XP SP3 is affected too, however.I think I better work out that method MS suggested so that I can remember it and do it on all PCs with XP.

According to Symantec SP3 isn't affected.

[momaka]

Re: 865PE Neo2-P Platinum Edition It's aliveeee!!

Just finished testing the cooler, results exceeded my expectations a bit, load temps went down 10°C, from 65-67°C to 55-57°C

Nice!
Copper heat sinks are indeed the only way to go with these "PressHot" P4's . The HP DC5000/D530 SFF boxes have nice copper heat sinks and after running CPU intensive stuff, I get similar temps as well (usually topping out in the mid 50's Celsius).

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: 865PE Neo2-P Platinum Edition It's aliveeee!!

u can also use a heatpipe heatsink to cool these space heater cpus. especially those heatpipe direct contact heatsinks that are quadcore ready or better work extremely well.