TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[stinger608]

With Asus P5Q series you can't go wrong.

+2 on that!!! I got one that I'm using now for a NAS server with a Xeon after the chip mod and it works flawless!

@biffzinker I'll look but I'm pretty sure I have another one that is just sitting in it's box. I'd shoot it to ya cheap bro if your in the US.

 

[biffzinker]

Got a DM from someone offering a GA-X48-DS4 (rev. 1.3.) Which one should I pick? The Gigabyte X48 seems like a nice board.

GA-X48-DS4 (rev. 1.3) Overview | Motherboard - GIGABYTE Global

Lasting Quality from GIGABYTE.GIGABYTE Ultra Durable™ motherboards bring together a unique blend of features and technologies that offer users the absolute ...

www.gigabyte.com

 

[Caring1]

Got a DM from someone offering a GA-X48-DS4 (rev. 1.3.) Which one should I pick? The Gigabyte X48 seems like a nice board.

I'd go the Asus P5Q.

 

[biffzinker]

He’s offering the Gigabyte board at no charge besides shipping. I’d rather not turn him away.

 

[budget_Optiplex]

That LC-Power should be fine.

LC-Power similar to his unit are made by Huntkey. The other kind of LC (LC-A/B/CxxxATX) however, is made by Deer.

I second this, I recapped one of these a few years ago for a friend, and it's surprisingly well built. The caps I removed all were within spec and didn't need replaced but the Rubycons I installed were still a nice upgrade. I also recall upgrading the noisy fan with an aftermarket unit. Unit is still powering an Athlon X4 840 system with a Radeon 7770 to this day with no issues at all. With the power demands of your system it will probably be OK. Heres a recent review (english subtitles)

 

[MaxiPro800]

I second this, I recapped one of these a few years ago for a friend, and it's surprisingly well built. The caps I removed all were within spec and didn't need replaced but the Rubycons I installed were still a nice upgrade. I also recall upgrading the noisy fan with an aftermarket unit. Unit is still powering an Athlon X4 840 system with a Radeon 7770 to this day with no issues at all. With the power demands of your system it will probably be OK. Heres a recent review (english subtitles)

Huntkey usually made good units. Dynex and a few others used Huntkey as their OEM as far as I remember. They were really great units, given that you'd recap them.

Speaking of Deers, I just did a restoration on one recently. Funny enough, it was a generic "Switching Power Supply" model LC-B400ATX.

Had cut wires, replaced all of them with ones from a dead Thermaltake. I was surprised to actually find good heatsinks and transformers.

The only thing to do is recap it (none of the caps are bulging,, but I'm not taking any chances). I was surprised to actually find 820uF Capxon primaries (Deer usually uses "Yang Chun/Saturn logo" there) and a 8A fuse no less.

 

[MaxiPro800]

He’s offering the Gigabyte board at no charge besides shipping. I’d rather not turn him away.

I would go with it, GB boards are pretty good.

 

[biffzinker]

I would go with it, GB boards are pretty good.

The board is in shipping, hopefully it survives the journey. Would of been a shorter trip if I'd of taken @stinger608 up on his offer.

 

[JustAnEngineer]

Just over 4000 miles for $15? Think what a great bargain that is.

 

[Retrorockit]

Perfect, picture saved for future reference! Thanks.

I have done this mod probably fifty times or so by now. I use a Harbor Freight needle file set and carefully file notches in the CPU, as I'm not a fan modding the LGA775 socket itself, too easy to slip and bend pins. After notches are filed I clean CPU well using IPA and low pressure compressed air, then install the adapter sticker.

View attachment 164802View attachment 164803

I modded the socket on mine because I didn't know the pins there were blanks. I thought it was "safer". But later on while testing some fsb tape mods, and swapping CPUs in and out I somehow got it wrong and lost a $12 Optiplex 380 MB. IDK yet if the CPU survived. So I'm a believer in notching the CPUs now.
I still don't believe in wearing bifocals.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Saw this and thought it might be useful info for some readers;

 

[biffzinker]

Here’s the board with a bonus Q9300, and Thermalright heatsink.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Here’s the board with a bonus Q9300, and Thermalright heatsink.

View attachment 165573

That is a nice board! The Q9300 CPUs generally have no problems going to a 167mhz FSB with a minimal bump in voltage, if any.

 

[biffzinker]

The Q9300 CPUs generally have no problems going to a 167mhz FSB with a minimal bump in voltage, if any.

I still have the Q9400 in the XFX nForce board. When I get a chance I'm moving the Q9400, and Gskill DDR2-1066 8GB four sticks kit into the Gigabyte board.

 

[Mr.Scott]

True Black 120.
Nice extra.
Still a very good cooler even for todays processors.

 

[biffzinker]

True Black 120.
Nice extra.
Still a very good cooler even for todays processors.

Sender got in touch with me, it’s a Thermalright Ultima-90. Said it will accept a 120mm fan.

What’s a easy way to clean oxidation off of nickel, and aluminum? The heatsink base is fine. Wonder if I can restore the shine? It’s just cosmetic though.

 

[lexluthermiester]

That is a nice board! The Q9300 CPUs generally have no problems going to a 167mhz FSB with a minimal bump in voltage, if any.

It would seem I mis-stated. I meant 400mhz FSB. You all likely knew what I meant... I need more sleep! LOL!

What’s a easy way to clean oxidation off of nickel, and aluminum?

Besides an acid bath, which will be messy and has an element of potential injury? Not much..

 

[Retrorockit]

Do you have any experience with the Q9505S @ 400fsb?

 

[MaxiPro800]

An oldie I bought yesterday. It's 13 years old at this point, and had bad RAM sticks. It's an ASUS G1-AK005C/NOR, and after googling I've found out it's the older model w/ 945PM and Geforce Go 7700. Newer ones (G1S) have 965PM + 8600M GT.

Runs Windows 8.1 currently, as I had a 100GB HDD with 8.1 already fresh installed.

More projects that I will try to get done:

- Aspire 5738Z
- ASUS G60V + M60VP fusion
- ASUS G70S revamp w/ 9800M GTS

 

[lexluthermiester]

Do you have any experience with the Q9505S @ 400fsb?

Not that exact model but it's baby brother, the Q9400s. The "s" denotes a lower TDP(65w instead of the normal 95w for the C2Q's), which directly means that the sample is a more efficient die. Very easy to OC, but because of how it runs by default you will need a slight voltage bump. Should only need an additional .1v to .125v to get a solid 400mhz FSB OC. The Q9400s I had for easily bumped up to 400 and then got to 434mhz FSB, but it needed a ton of voltage which I didn't want to leave it at. Settled on 403mhz FSB which worked out to 3.22ghz which was a respectable 600mhz(ish) OC.

An oldie I bought yesterday. It's 13 years old at this point, and had bad RAM sticks. It's an ASUS G1-AK005C/NOR, and after googling I've found out it's the older model w/ 945PM and Geforce Go 7700.

That's still a decent system. Should be good for general computing even today. It'll game as long as you choose titles from that timeframe and back, which is a whole lot of good stuff.

Runs Windows 8.1 currently, as I had a 100GB HDD with 8.1 already fresh installed.

If it were me, I'd get an SSD for it, even if only a 128GB or something in that range. An SSD would massively improve system response times.

 

[budget_Optiplex]

Here’s the board with a bonus Q9300, and Thermalright heatsink.

That's a sweet old board!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can't wait to see what you do with it.

Saw this and thought it might be useful info for some readers;

Haven't watched this yet, but expect it will be along the lines of my own experiences in my retro gaming PC. Had a Geforce 3 that died, and wanted an AGP card that is cheap (most desirable AGP cards like Geforce 4 TI's, etc. are getting expensive), has proper Win98SE support, supports Table Fog and 8-bit Palleted Textures, has a DVI-I port for use with an HDMI adapter, and good DOS support.

ASUS V9520 128mb DVI VGA Graphics Video Card for sale online | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for ASUS V9520 128mb DVI VGA Graphics Video Card at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

Ended up discovering these Asus/HP FX5200s and picked a few up for $12 each with free shipping. These have 128MB on a 128-bit bus (many FX5200s only have a 64-bit memory bus which really kills them). So far a good experience, card performs better then the Geforce 3 did, and I've had no compatibility issues at all using the 56.64 drivers. Card also overclocks well. Definitely plan on replacing the dried out thermal grease though! A nice choice for someone on a budget building a retro system!

Edit: Stock clocks are 250MHz GPU / 400MHz memory so it's faster then the card in Phil's FX5500 video.....I BIOS modded card and am now running at 275MHz / 450MHz memory. I think card has more on the table but I'm CPU limited with my Willamette P4 CPU so this is fine.

 

[Retrorockit]

Windows 8 got generally disregarded by many. But with Win7 support ended is it a viable option for older computers? Does it run Win7 utilities like Throttlestop and SetFSB?

 

[budget_Optiplex]

Windows 8 got generally disregarded by many. But with Win7 support ended is it a viable option for older computers? Does it run Win7 utilities like Throttlestop and SetFSB?

I have a similar old laptop hardware wise as MaxiPro800 (Core 2 CPU, 945 mobile chipset, 4GB maximum RAM with only about 3.2GB usable because of chipset limits), and I have found that of all the supported Windows OS that I've tried on it, that Windows 10 LTSB 2015 32-bit runs the best.......with some tweaking of services I can get the machine down to about 600MB of RAM usage when it's idling after a fresh boot. I suggest you do some research on it, you won't be disappointed. All your Windows 7 32-bit software will work just fine. I run the 64-bit version on my Xeon desktop, it too runs awesome. The only bummer is the newest AMD drivers that work are 18.3.3 from 2018 (though I've had no problems gaming with these older drivers even in Metro Exodus). Nvidia drivers don't seem to have this issue however. LTSB 2016 is a little heavier on resource usage and telemetry, but current AMD/Nvidia drivers work fine at least last time I checked a few months ago.

Big problem with Windows 8.1 is there are no current AMD video drivers available.........last ones are from early 2017 as I recall.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Windows 8 got generally disregarded by many. But with Win7 support ended is it a viable option for older computers? Does it run Win7 utilities like Throttlestop and SetFSB?

They should, but Windows 8 though... If you're not going online with it, go back to Windows 7. If you're going to get online...

Windows 10 LTSB 2015 32-bit runs the best

...Windows 10 LTSB or LTSC will be solid as there is no bloat and they both run lean and clean be default. But you should run the 64bit versions as your Asus has a 64bit CPU.

 

[budget_Optiplex]

Windows 10 LTSB or LTSC will be solid as there is no bloat and they both run lean and clean be default. But you should run the 64bit versions as your Asus has a 64bit CPU.

The problem is the 945PM chipset is limited to apx 3.2GB of RAM available to Windows......so 64-bit is a bit heavier for such a limited amount of RAM. The later 965 chipset got rid of this artificial limitation......