TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Dinnercore]

I found an offer for some fans and heatsinks for just 5€ total and got this bundle (excluding the V60, that was 10€ extra):



Now the V60 and that Enermax 120mm fan are kinda recent still, but the collector part in me was excited to see that all the things were still sealed in its original packaging and unused. And those Thermaltake-Orbs are the OG ones from around 2000 ish. The blorb was not a well performing cooler, the oorb was received better but still had some majors flaws in terms of mounting hardware. This product line later developed into full sized CPU and GPU coolers in this shape.
The two Papst fans are standard 80mm and fit the V60. Maybe I have a use for one of those in a very old PC-case too.




That Asus V60 is a great addition to my testbench system with an E8500 in it. Had been using the intel stock heatsink before and on my mild 3.7GHz OC it got up into the 60°C+ range. With the V60 it stays at 45°C with 1.28V, plenty of room for higher OC now.



The good part is that this thing fits my EVGA board really well, these 780i chipsets in combination with my super high-profile RAM leave little room for any oversized tower cooler. There is the RAM and opposite of that on the I/O side are the fins of the VRM heatsink that stand up quite a bit. Below the CPU is not much space due to the mainboard fan and chipset heatsink.

But the V60 is like it´s made for this board. It came with an adjustable fan, that has a little knob to control fan-speed, made by enermax. Not sure if that is the stock fan for this one.

Reviews mentioned this thing as the 'moped-engine' not just for the looks, but the noise too. It can rattle really bad, due to the fan being just dropped in from the top with that top-plate. Easy fix, just take a small patch of the soft side of velcro tape and stick it to the bottom of the top-plate = no more rattle.

 

[Splinterdog]

I have a CM V6 on a Phenom II x 4 965 (almost nostalgic now, lol) and man, does that thing cool well.
That V60 looks very tidy!

 

[8bitgamer757]

Here are some pics of my thunkpad

 

[Robert B]

The motherboard recapping was a complete success!

The EPOX EP-7KXA V0.4 Slot A motherboard is running like a dream. Now with top of the line PANASONIC FR caps. No more bad caps era capacitors on this board! 48 caps have been replaced. After this job I can recap any board no matter the type of caps: SMD, Polymer, Electrolytic. It takes time but the rewards are far greater than the effort.

 

[Dinnercore]

I´m not sure if this is already nostalgic hardware for most of you, but since I´m still rather young it is for me. It marks the time I got really into PC-Hardware, I was ~13 yo. No money for a high end PC-System but reading all about it in magazines and dreaming of having access to the good stuff.



I was really into the idea of multi-GPU back then, 3-way SLI was something I wanted to try. I´ve recently done a build based on the 780i chipset but found that it gets toasty quick when overclocking quad cores. So I looked around for the next step up and got this Striker II Extreme. 790i chipset and already prepared for integration into a waterloop.
Now I know that the nForce stuff is not taking the crown in terms of CPU-OC, but from my testing so far it manages SLI very well. The full x16 PCIe lanes help a lot and with the 790i I can switch from DDR2 to DDR3.



The board itself is in good condition as far as I can tell, it came with the matching Supreme FX soundcard and I/O-Shield. Booted with full 8GB RAM without trouble (Geil EVO 2 1600 - CL7).

 

[Robert B]

Today I found this puppy.

Pentium 90 MHz Engineering Sample. Lately the local flea market is full of surprises. It costed little over 4 EUROs

A80502-90 SX968 L5180097-0648 / 25010380ND MALAY 518 ES

 

[lexluthermiester]

The motherboard recapping was a complete success!

Very cool!

 

[Robert B]

Restored and Restored.

The P90 was gently cleaned using metal polishing cream and cotton sticks, the ceramic surface was gently massaged, followed by hot water and dishsoap and an IPA 99% wash. I straightened the pins to a point I considered it was sufficient. Afterwards I tried to see how it would fit using three S7 motherboards.

Every time I tried to insert it into the socket, one side wouldn't enter easily. On a close inspection I saw that one pin would get a little bent after I took the CPU out of the socket. This has happened on each of the three motherboards I tried. In the end I found the answer to my predicament . One pin of the CPU isnt centered in its socket and it is a little offset. It seems ES comes with some quirks. Until now I didnt see something like this. The CPU sockets of the three test motherboards are OK.

I didnt test the CPU but I'm 100% sure that it works. This CPUs are immortal.


The EP-7KXA came out looking like GLASS! Those yummy PANASONIC FR caps look bitchin' After the recap procedure it stood in a box and only today I had the time to do a final cleaning.

 

[phill]

The motherboard recapping was a complete success!

The EPOX EP-7KXA V0.4 Slot A motherboard is running like a dream. Now with top of the line PANASONIC FR caps. No more bad caps era capacitors on this board! 48 caps have been replaced. After this job I can recap any board no matter the type of caps: SMD, Polymer, Electrolytic. It takes time but the rewards are far greater than the effort.

I love how clean this hardware is @Robert B !! Is that a Voodoo 5500?? I love this thread

 

[Robert B]

@phill - it is indeed a V5 5500 AGP but to be true, technically speaking, it it has only one chip working so it is kind like a 5500/2=V4 4500 with 64MB The price was good and I wanted to own it so it was mine ALL MINE! I cleaned it and I will investigate the matter later. For now it is just a show piece. When I held it in my hands it struck me how fragile it really is.

With the main chip active it works like a dream. No problem. If I try to activate the second chip I get rows of vertical red lines and the PC freezes.

Some time in the future I'll change the capacitors and see what happens. Some guys have tried this and they got nothing in the end. The general consensus is that the second chip needs replacing but me being me I'll try every other options until I get to spend big for a chip swap. One big SMD OS-CON cap 470uf 6V doesnt get warm as it should when the card runs and maybe that is the problem. Also someone has fiddled with some of the SMD 10uf 16V caps. The 470uf 6V and 100uf 16V OS-CON are a little expensive and hard to come by but they can still be found. The 10uf 16V will be replaced with better ones LOW ESR Panasonic.

For now I just dont want to open a can of worms so I just enjoy having it in my collection.

 

[phill]

It's definitely a card I need to get in my collection, boxed or unboxed I think... @Robert B , I think it looks cleaner than the day it was released out the factory for sale!!

 

[MrGenius]

The 470uf 6V and 100uf 16V OS-CON are a little expensive and hard to come by but they can still be found.

Ummm...not really. On both accounts. Readily available and cheap. Unless you consider < $2 a piece "a little expensive".

...Panasonic.

United Chemi-Con makes the best caps(there's a reason most modern hardware is covered with them, and nothing else). I only get Panasonic when they're cheaper with the same specs, or have slightly better specs(which is almost never).

United/Nippon Chemi-Con > Panasonic ≥ Nichicon ≈ Rubycon ≥ OST(not Japanese, but still good caps, I don't care what you say)

Speaking of Panasonic caps and, coincidentally on the same page, ASUS coolers. I just recapped my P4S800-MX with Panasonic industrial caps and slapped an ASUS Silent Square on the P4EE 3.2 Gallatin I just spent and arm and a leg for. Keepin' 'er cooler than a cucumber. Haven't seen it break 40°C w/ 1.76V full load. Damn thing still won't OC for shit though. Can't even get 3.7 out of it(I can get 3.8 out of my 3.2 Prescott on the stock cooler for reference). Oh well.... Probably just needs a beefier VRM(seems to be tripping the OCP). Good news is @ 3.6 on air it still beats every other air cooled Socket 478 CPU, except the P4EE 3.4, pretty handily(in most use cases).

Other notable hardware shown: XFX HD 4650 AGP 1GB DDR2 @ 775/563, G.SKILL F1-3200PHU2-2GBZX 2GB @ 450MHz 2.5-3-2-6 2T w/ 2.5V, SIIG SoundWave 7.1 PCI, TRENDnet TEG-PCIXTR Gigabit PCI NIC, the rest is nothing special.

 

[Animalpak]

One of my first High end system, the VERY first RAMPAGE EXTREME socket 775, Q6700 Core 2 Quad, Patriot DDR2 Nvidia SLI Edition i think 4 GB. A gtx 580

And a Corsair HX1000.

 

[phill]

I'm not sure if this is nostalgic or not but...

Sadly I thought the box was in a bit better condition than it is but it's not the end of the world.... I'll not be buying another one like this again!! Maybe the UD9 if it's boxed....

 

[lexluthermiester]

I'm not sure if this is nostalgic or not but...

View attachment 118759

Sadly I thought the box was in a bit better condition than it is but it's not the end of the world.... I'll not be buying another one like this again!! Maybe the UD9 if it's boxed....

Not sure that would qualify as it's a platform that is discontinued but still relevant. Still, damn cool find! Good price?

 

[phill]

For the UD7 and the X5660 Xeon, I paid £135 posted, which isn't so bad as I bet around £10 to £15 of that was postage (depending on how the guy sent it )

I think @Tomgang might approve of it tho

 

[Mr.Scott]

Not sure that would qualify as it's a platform that is discontinued but still relevant. Still, damn cool find! Good price?

It's still a 10 year old platform though, relevant or not.

@ Phill - My 5660

 

[phill]

It's still a 10 year old platform though, relevant or not.

@ Phill - My 5660 View attachment 118772View attachment 118773

How much stuff you got there @Mr.Scott ?!! Well at least I have some aim to try and beat ya Do you still have all this hardware bud?

 

[Mr.Scott]

How much stuff you got there @Mr.Scott ?!! Well at least I have some aim to try and beat ya Do you still have all this hardware bud?

Lol
That is a loaded question.
I very rarely get rid of any hardware. Anything that I've showed on pretty much any forum, I still have. All of it still works perfectly.
My wife once asked me "how much do you think all of that junk is worth?"
I was busy at the time so I just answered off the cuff, "eh, maybe 20-30K."
Her jaw hit the F***ing floor.

 

[lexluthermiester]

maybe 20-30K

My guess is much more.

 

[Mr.Scott]

I figured if I lowballed the impact would be less.

 

[phill]

Lol
That is a loaded question.
I very rarely get rid of any hardware. Anything that I've showed on pretty much any forum, I still have. All of it still works perfectly.
My wife once asked me "how much do you think all of that junk is worth?"
I was busy at the time so I just answered off the cuff, "eh, maybe 20-30K."
Her jaw hit the F***ing floor.

I'd love to know the worth of what I've got here just to make sure that I've got the right insurance for it all That said, I'm going through everything at the moment and taking a note of what I have.. I think it's going to be a bit of a waste of time but hey at least I won't be able to get duplicates anymore Well hopefully

 

[Mr.Scott]

I'd love to know the worth of what I've got here just to make sure that I've got the right insurance for it all That said, I'm going through everything at the moment and taking a note of what I have.. I think it's going to be a bit of a waste of time but hey at least I won't be able to get duplicates anymore Well hopefully

I still get dupes all the time.
About the only thing I have ever actually inventoried are socket A processors. I have at least one of all ever released, and a couple the were never released to the public. None of it is insured.

 

[Trekkie4]

Kind of off-topic, but still relevant to nostalgic hardware... Been playing "Duke Nukem Forever" for the first time, and I can't help but to notice how the game sucks, comparing to the original, from 1996.

I also can't believe it took them 15yrs to finish the game, so now we have a situation where the original game ran on early Socket 7 machines (I even successfully ran the game on AMD 5x86 @133MHz, with 32MB EDO RAM) with NO 3D acceleration whatsoever, where the sequel is aimed for current QuadCore/i3/i5 series & power hungry PCIe cards...

 

[Deleted member 24505]

I figured if I lowballed the impact would be less.

Always lowball first offer, they can obly say no