Re: What did you buy on black friday?

A tank of gas, a pack of smokes, a rope, a shovel, a hatchet..

Hey, the holidays are stressful! I gotta cope somehow!

..But no, seriously, nothing at all. I did my shopping on Cyber Monday.


Exactly! Drivers are bad enough normally. Introduce some shopping fever and it might as well be Carmageddon out there on black friday near the malls and big-box stores....

Re: Is one of my hard drives dying? chirping sound

Well, noises coming from a HDD aren't always a sign of impending doom.
Definately worrying though.

1. Could be the drives platters momentarily spinning down and then spinning back up. I had one do that for a bit until I discovered a loose pin in the molex on the 12v line connected to it. It wasn't regular but it sounded kinda "chirpy".

2. Could be the drives control board going nuts and bonking the reader head arm into the end-stop/casing. Once a drive is doing this, they're not usually...

Re: Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs


Ahh, no worries, the boards go for peanuts right now!
The dual LGA 771 S5000PAL board I grabbed on ebay only set me back $20 after a week or two of watching for deals! They're a few bucks more at the moment but you could easily [URL="http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_sacat=0&_from=R40&_nkw=LGA%20771%20Motherboard&_sop=15"]nab one for 30[/URL] if you were in a hurry. The server grade hardware is built so robust, even going with a used board, you can probably expect many years of life...

Re: Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs

Nice project! Lookin' forward to the pics when you get a chance!

If you're looking for an ultra-cheap upgrade, the Xeon 5148LVs are still ([URL="https://www.google.com/shopping/product/17364819190256671097?q=intel%20xeon%20processor&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=MAo&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&bpcl=38897761&biw=1024&bih=603&sa=X&ei=8V62UO7TCIbI2wX0lYDQCg&ved=0CJIBEPMCMAA&prds=scoring:tp"]amazingly[/URL]) cheap! Don't be...

Re: Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs



Haha! Did you do one of those dual 5148 builds too? I got a pair of those little gems for 11 bucks each! Grabbed a used S5000PAL for cheap on Ebay. The heat sinks were too expensive so I modified a couple of old ones to fit ([URL="http://s1200.beta.photobucket.com/user/Psycho0124/media/Heatsink12.jpg.html"]ugly but they work great[/URL]).


It's a power house for server tasks but it'd be useless for most desktop kind of applications/games. Without a PCIe 16x port, none of the...

Re: Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs



Haha! Well put sir!


Choosing a specific processor for your budget/performance needs is already a tricky balance. Finding a motherboard that comes with all the features you need as well as the CPU that you want will be just short of impossible. Plus it will stifle intel motherboard development. I bet AMD has its fingers crossed!

Yeah Intel.. Please sodomize yourself with your BGA equipment.....

Re: did I kill the board? too much heat decapping :-(

It's certainly do-able!
Trace repairs are tricky but with the right tools and a healthy portion of patience, I bet can get this board up and running again.

1. You'll need some solder wick for fixing the inevitable blobs.
2. Get a lower wattage soldering iron. All that BBQ on the board means you're running WAY too high of a wattage as well as much too large a tip. I use a cheapo $10 45-watt iron from radio shack and it's served me well through dozens of soldering projects over the years. Let it sit...