Xeon modded Lenovo A70 it made this system usable in 2023

[crazyfrog]

Before we start you need to look at yourself if you need to tell me that old processors aren't as fast as newer ones.

I have 2 lenovo A70 systems they're old but have 4gb ram each, theyre towers with PCIE support so very modular, run cool and quiet, support windows 10 & 11(microsoft have issues) and have gigabit ethernet. There is enough here for a decent desktop experience but modern games, some productivity software and WEB BROWSERS will choke on this budget pentium cpu as well as windows 10 background tasks. The one thing I wont attempt is using old storage when basic SSDs are so cheap, the system supports sata 2 which is plenty for a responsive system. Theres a Kioxia 240gb ssd dangling in the below photo but it will be getting a 3d printed bracket.

 

 

E5800 pentium performance in 2023

The system was really unresponsive with 90% or 100% cpu utilisation browsing the web. The geekbench score of 382 single core and 618 multicore nails the performance issue here.

 

The mod

Its possible to use old xeon 771 chips in core 2 duo/quad era motherboards often going from single/dual core 65nm chips to full blown 45m quad core chips that can overclock to 4ghz. The mod requires a bios patched with xeon microcodes, a taped sticker on the cpu pins and either the motherboard alignment pins cut out with a 18mm snap off knife or pre modded cpu from china.

As I already own an x5460 I found premodded bios files for my system and flashed them via windows.

 

This youtuber modded the bios, I tried to do patch myself but couldnt get the patcher to recognise a current Lenovo .rom file.

 

Install

As I was feeling traditional after dissaseembly I dropped my new cpu onto the socket pins. Using a microscope and steel soldering tweezers the one bent pin got mostly bent back.

 

A cmos reset was required without it posted but wouldnt get to windows. Cmos reset by removing the CR2032, unplugging hdmi and mains cable then holding the power button.

 

Cooling

Its really obvious that this system needed new thermal paste on the cpu, northbridge, southbridge and gpu but I think we forget how bad modern cooling can be. Even though the system came with only a 65w pentium chip the system still came as standard with a bulky aluminium heatsink and thick modular fan and fully supports my 120w xeon cpu.

 

 

The experience

Using this system is night and day better its so much more responsive and doesnt get become unresponsive from windows update or anti virus scans. Browsing the internet is responsive and video playback works in HD. Booting the computer is much faster with 16.4 seconds to the windows login screen or 20 seconds to desktop.

 

 

The new geekbench score with a 10.7% imrovement in single core performance thanks to the extra cache on the premium xeon and 90% improvement in multicore performance.

 

 

The caveat

The old geforce 8400 graphics card is lacking while its got some video accleration in the form of 'second generation PureVideo HD' for h264 which DOES improve playback in vlc, youtube uses vp9 and seems to be moving back to that from av1, while I can playback 4k30 content at 84% utilisation its not a zero impact thing like on a 12th gen system with vp9 acceleration.

Alternatives

The 3.16ghz xeon x5460 is about the best cpu you can expect to pickup at a reasonable price but other options like the intel 2.8ghz q9505, q9500 and q9550 or 2.66ghz q9400 share a similar used price and cache and if you're using a non oem mobo its not unreasonable to overclock those cpus to well beyond the 3.16ghz I achieved. Yes its easy to pickup better samples but its the used market and depends on your area.

Lenovo_ThinkCentre A70_L-IG41M2_BIOS_MOD.zip

[Biohazard777]

1 hour ago, crazyfrog said:

The caveat

The old geforce 8400 graphics card is lacking while its got some video accleration in the form of 'second generation PureVideo HD' for h264 which DOES improve playback in vlc, youtube uses vp9 and seems to be moving back to that from av1, while I can playback 4k30 content at 84% utilisation its not a zero impact thing like on a 12th gen system with vp9 acceleration.

GT 1030, 25-30$
no AV1 but it does VP9 and H265 4:2:0.

[crazyfrog]

4 hours ago, Biohazard777 said:

GT 1030, 25-30$
no AV1 but it does VP9 and H265 4:2:0.

I can’t get that price it must be specific to your area it’s over £40 here. It’s hard to consider spending that as once I do I could bought a i5 6500 system in my area. 

[Biohazard777]

2 minutes ago, crazyfrog said:

I can’t get that price it must be specific to your area it’s over £40 here. It’s hard to consider spending that as once I do I could bought a i5 6500 system in my area. 

Ouch, £40 is close to 50 USD, way too much for 1030, I agree.

I'd try lowballing local classifieds, perhaps someone is in a hurry to sell .

 

Anyhow, I still have one LGA775 / DDR2 era desktop with a Xeon in it.

Sata SSD and it works fine. Having it run Linux helps of course.
And mobo (MS-7358) supporting 8 gigs of ram is a nice bonus.

Two downsides to running these old machines:
1) Reliability (self-explanatory).
2) Power consumption.
You are easily looking at 60W doing absolutely nothing and 100W+ doing anything.

8th/9th gen intel SFF/1L/Tiny PCs can be found for < 200$ (depending on where you live, as discussed earlier), those will sip 10-15W on low load and won't go over 60W at full load.
 

[crazyfrog]

2 hours ago, Biohazard777 said:

Ouch, £40 is close to 50 USD, way too much for 1030, I agree.

I'd try lowballing local classifieds, perhaps someone is in a hurry to sell .

 

Anyhow, I still have one LGA775 / DDR2 era desktop with a Xeon in it.

Sata SSD and it works fine. Having it run Linux helps of course.
And mobo (MS-7358) supporting 8 gigs of ram is a nice bonus.

Two downsides to running these old machines:
1) Reliability (self-explanatory).
2) Power consumption.
You are easily looking at 60W doing absolutely nothing and 100W+ doing anything.

8th/9th gen intel SFF/1L/Tiny PCs can be found for < 200$ (depending on where you live, as discussed earlier), those will sip 10-15W on low load and won't go over 60W at full load.
 

Thanks the gt 1030 would improve the desktop but I really don’t need it it’s not my main system. As I said the system will do 4k30 vp9 and handles 1080p absolutely fine. Me adding a caveat was just pushing that the system isn’t perfect just because I’ve upgraded the cpu.

 

I have proper hardware it’s all ‘mid end’ as the locals to me say. 5800x/rtx 3060 ti desktop and N100 based mini pc as a torrent/dlna server. 

Nice server if you have time next time you clean it out I’d look at a 45nm chip. You probably don’t need the extra performance but cooler temperatures would help fan RPMs.

[thrasher_565]

 

 

there some mb that support it with out the bios mod. but there much newer mb...

my attempt at an over kill windows 98se pc...

 

the q6600 was a vary popular quad core cpu should be cheap now adays? unless its collector now?

Edited September 15, 2023 by thrasher_565

[crazyfrog]

On 9/15/2023 at 3:03 AM, thrasher_565 said:

 

 

there some mb that support it with out the bios mod. but there much newer mb...

my attempt at an over kill windows 98se pc...

 

the q6600 was a vary popular quad core cpu should be cheap now adays? unless its collector now?

I wasn’t aware some support it. I know some boot with an unmodified bios but missing microcode means they don’t run very well at all.

there’s a page here with links to different board bioses including yours. You will probably find windows 7 and 10 works better even if 98 doesn’t care or is less weird.

http://tanieprocesory.pl/en/bios2-2/

 

Yeah there’s loads of cheap core 2 quad CPUs but getting the q9000 series to run newer software(like a web browser) is best as you get more cache not just raw clock speed. As I don’t have an overclocking board I just got a higher clocked one rather than an e5440 and overclocking.

 

I do have a history with Xeon builds and this one was awesome in 2016

https://browser.geekbench.com/v3/cpu/5102551

[thrasher_565]

22 minutes ago, crazyfrog said:

I wasn’t aware some support it. I know some boot with an unmodified bios but missing microcode means they don’t run very well at all.

there’s a page here with links to different board bioses including yours. You will probably find windows 7 and 10 works better even if 98 doesn’t care or is less weird.

http://tanieprocesory.pl/en/bios2-2/

 

Yeah there’s loads of cheap core 2 quad CPUs but getting the q9000 series to run newer software(like a web browser) is best as you get more cache not just raw clock speed. As I don’t have an overclocking board I just got a higher clocked one rather than an e5440 and overclocking.

 

I do have a history with Xeon builds and this one was awesome in 2016

https://browser.geekbench.com/v3/cpu/5102551

i dint say the 771 would not work on some mb with a different os. it probably can. but you need like a last gen mb for it to work with out bios mods.

ya there are way better cpus for a different os but people only use 771 for 98 for the cash and 939 cpus cost too much. there no point using it for anything els other then because i can witch is in your case.

 

771 cpu mb support

 

the gole with the build was what the fasted 98se i could make and this was an attempt at it. but failed. a well tuned p3 could probably have a better score then this build.(and i find out there even faster build then what i got like a 7800 working in 98se...

 

i dont no how to mod bios so this is best i could do.

pcie and 98se is not really documented and people that no dont ever say it can work or not or what mbs work or not.

 

 

 

Edited September 18, 2023 by thrasher_565

[crazyfrog]

11 hours ago, thrasher_565 said:

the gole with the build was what the fasted 98se i could make and this was an attempt at it. but failed. a well tuned p3 could probably have a better score then this build.(and i find out there even faster build then what i got like a 7800 working in 98se...

 

i dont no how to mod bios so this is best i could do.

pcie and 98se is not really documented and people that no dont ever say it can work or not or what mbs work or not.

I dont have the interest in 98 everything I'd want to run runs in XP or later.

 

I already linked to modded bios files for your 'gigabyte p43t-es3g' so you dont have to mod yourself. Just download gigabytes @BIOS utility from there support page and load the file into that.

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-P43T-ES3G-rev-10/support#support-dl-utility