Matt's old computer junk build

[Matacks]

Hi this thread is about a build im going to make from old computer junk that.  

 

 I live in USA.  The budget is already paid off.  Much of the hardware Im using is very obsolete and has little value left.  

 

The purpose of this build will be to use old hardware to make a minecraft server and windows 10 NAS.   I'm just going to load it with as many old HHDs and SSDs that I have laying around.

 

This will be a pic happy thread.  I intend to upload a ton of picutres of old computer junk.   

 

I hope any readers find it entertaining.    I'm going to make this thread to be like a little blog.

Let's begin!

Here is my mighty antec 1200 v3.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Matacks]

Here is my very first PC build.  This was from around 2011.   

 

i found a canceled  receipt from newegg with most of the parts.  Maybe I double ordered it by mistake.  I cannot seem to locate the original receipt.

Phenom 2 X6 1090t on a asus M4A79T deluxe motherboard.  It had two 500gb samsung HDDs in raid 0.  The gpu was an AMD HD 6870 turbo.     Eventually I ran two of those in Xfire.   The case didn't always look so ridiculous with that small singular 1060 in there..   uhhh this hardware is way too old for the 1060 6gb anyway.  Actually, im pulling this card out of ehre to be used in a different, more recent PC.      This was a secondary system that was mainly placed in storage for the past several years. 

 

It had windows 7 way back.   You might be able to tell from some of the parts in this build that I used to watch 3Dgameman.   When his channel stopped doing content Linus's channel was really starting to take off.

[Matacks]

Ahh I actually found those old GPUs.  

This system wasn't really bad for its time.   This had a beefier PSU in the past as well.  Enermax revolution 920w to be specific. 80+ silver 

 

i wonder if i could install some of those amermine zone drivers to use these again??   I prolly won't bother..

 

Actually, im not bother with any of this hardware.  I won't be using this for the NAS/mc server build.  I just want the antec 1200 case..

 

But I wonder if it will boot up?

[Matacks]

It lives!  It took two tried and about 7 minuets to boot up.  I dont remember this being so slow back then.  

 

before starting it i used some contact cleaner on a few connectors.  This didn't seem like a bad idea since it sat around for ma years years.

my only purpose for starting this up is to quickly check the HHDs for any special data or old pictures I may have had on here.  This PC is officially retired.

[Matacks]

That old splashscreen was sweet.

Oops.  That's not the overclocking video 

 

 

I was able to find a very old video of linus overclocking this motherboard.  Looks like he had a different cpu than my 1090t.  

Oops that's not the overclocking video.

Same 1090t CPU different motherboard.  I don't think i had realized at the time that I didn't have the fastest chipset for that CPU..  

 

my desktop was missing its background for some reason.   Eventually a windows 10 desktop background popped up.    This is not the original OS.  This OS is new from a couple years ago. I gave this PC to my nephew who held onto it for many years before returning it. He got his own PC when he went to college.

 

 

 

 

theres not much in here to save.  I'm going to use the two Samsung 500gb HHDs in my NAS build.

 

check out my sweet mods!  Cleaning the front air filters on the antec 1200 was a complete pain.  It required the removal of about 2 dozen thumbs screws

I modified the front gratings so it could be easily removed in one singular peice.  I also made the filters into one peice.  That needs to be taped.  It brokeh.

 

I2

[Matacks]

I'm using my trusty HDD dock to save a few items.  I found some sentimental baby picutres of my child on there.  Awwwwwww... 

 

To be continued 

[Matacks]

I am back.  Today most of the data was saved off the old 1090t PC.   I really should have just temporally  installed those drives into the case..   my usb 3.0 wasn't working.  It took ages to transfer some of the data over the old USB 2.0 port.

 

 

I did some cable management behind my TV.  This was a disaster about a half hour ago.

I should be getting a new PC today. I hope.  You can see some of my networking stuff here. 

 

Netgear router AX1600 (bought used ebay)

 

Tp-link 5 port ethernet switch

 

Obihai Obi200 voip box (free landline phone service with Google voice)

 

Switchbot wifi hub

 

Used some blue tack rolled into little balls to stick those items down onto my TV stand. Its very annoying to have those sliding around everywhere.

 

The ethernet switch enabled me to run a few lower bandwidth ethernet cables around my home.  These go to two additional routers. When you connect to wifi at my house a while bunch of access points pop up.  I could merge these in the settings to make them behave sorta like a mesh system but I perfer to manually connect to the routers as need be.  The main router has DHCP while the others are set to DHCP off.

here is the video which I used as a guid to setup the routers.  I hope this is ok to share videos from other youtubers.  Somebody let me know if thats not good.

should be all good.

 

 

 

The internet isn't too speedy.  I get about 325Mbps.   The cable company is supposed to be upgrading to fiber so everyone gets 1gbps.  I may have to be a squeaky wheel to get them to install it.  I live at the end of a really long driveway in the woods. 

 

Anyway, back to my NAS/mc server build.

[Matacks]

OK.  Here is the old PC I'm planning to make into a NAS.  This ancient build is still my current PC.   It still performs great tbh.  This is my second PC build. Its still in use.  The little white block ontop is called a switchbot.  This enables me to remotely turn the PC on and off from anywhere.   It physically presses a button which is controled by an app on my phone. I can connect to the PC through Google remote desktop to manually operate it if i wish.  I used to do this to start up my minecraft server.  My plan is to automate this process with task scheduler so that i no longer need to interact with the OS.

There will be no GPU or monitor connected to it.

 

 

pretty bad.  I havent dusted if in a while.  

 

anyway.  

 

coolermaster scout 2 case.   I customized (sorta ruined) this case and chopped out the HDD racks.  This was to enhance airflow and give it a streamlined appearance.. the two sata SSDs were able to sit flat on the back bulkhead.

Asus P9X79 pro mobo 2011 socket 

Intel 3960x (bought later originally is has a 3930k)

Aorus 1080ti  (bought many years later)  originally it had a 780.  The 1080ti is bottlenecked a little bit.

32 gb corsair lp (low profile) ddr3

Seasonic SS-760XP modular PSU.  

1tb M.2 SSD  in pcie adapter.  

There's a custom bios which made that possible.  Thanks fernando.

 

 

the extra card on the bottom is just for extra usb 3.0 ports.

 

 

There's a whole bunch of noctua fans.   You can guess who inspired me to put a bunch of noctua fans in this case an the massive noctua heatsink.  That was linus.   i hope the heatsink will fit into the antec 1200.  It should.

 

 

 

[Matacks]

I did find the receipt to (most of) this one.  This was an expensive boy back in 2013.  I'm not sure why I upgraded the PC so quickly after the first build which was recently made in the year 2011.   It may have been because in 2013 I had recently gained new employment.  I'm also noticing that the date of this purchase is very close to my B-day.. hehe

It also had two sandisk extreme 2 500gb sata SSDs in raid 0.  Those were spensive back then..  yikes.  

 

 

 

[Matacks]

There's plenty of room to put this PC into the antec case.  That antec 1200 can take any heatsink!

 

 

let the swapling and dusting commence!

 

[Matacks]

Here  a bunch of old HDDs and a few SSDs that are going into the NAS..  I was hoping to get 6tb.  Looks like I'll only have 4tb.  One of my seagate barracuda is brokeh..  seagate barracuda doesn't do too well if it's been dropped.

i got another one inbound from ebay.

these are all going into my HDD dock to be formated.   I plan to pool these all together as one storage designation. 

I will follow this guide.

https://youtu.be/n2Hi57msZO8?si=vHNIB61LAzU9ykGI

  I may choose to add additional storage at a later time.   I'm unsure whether I will make a simple or mirror drive pool.  The mirrored one will halve my storage capacity but provide redundancy..  

the antec 1200 drive cages can accept three HDDs each.  There an additional spot up top above the HDD cages that could potentially hold more drives.

 

[Matacks]

I had an issue with my HDD dock..  

The pic explains the story 

 

 

the pin was bent.  

 

 

 

I fixed it with some fine tipped tweezers.

 

 

 

 

All good now.  Also one of the sandisk extreme 2 SSDs wasn't being recognized by disk management.   I had to open up diskpart and clean it.   Then I was able to format it.

 

The NAS build will continue! 

 

[Matacks]

New PC day!

 

I finally have a new PC.  I had to pick it up at a CVS becuase the UPS man didn't want to come down my driveway.  Everything is covered in ice.

In USA a CVS is a pharmacy and store.   I am also learning it can be a designated UPS pickup location.  Other shippers like fedex can use Dollar General stores as pickup locations.

 

 

the sticker tells more of the story..  this is why good old P9X79 pro is now going to NAS duty..  I used that PC from a looonnng time.  I wanted a new one.  Prebuilts seem to be the only way to go nowadays.

 

I used to be that the PC would arrive in many smaller boxes.  Now the PC arrives in one big box.

 

I am not allowing myself to play with the new PC until I finish my NAS.

[Matacks]

 

Onetime several years ago the PC fell put the back of my hatchback car. This happened when we opened the hatch. 

The PC survived the impact.  Luckily it just had that little 1060 card in there at the time.

Some damage occurred to antec 1200s lower corner.  I hammered and bent it back to shape the best I could. 

 

The side panels were straightened out the best I could get them.  Its mostly flush.  I want this to be a nice neat build.

 

switchbot has been affixed to antec 1200 with 3M tape adhesive.

 

 

[Matacks]

I had to devise a way to install these small drives into the HHD cages.

i took some silicone aqaurium airline tubing and stetched it so that it could be held by a knot and some washers.  The needle nose held closed by a rubber band helped me to get those in there.

  I made a little silicone tubing suspension for my small drives.  I also found another small HDD about 700gb to throw in there.  The bottom SSD only needed to be held in my one peice of tubing.

 

presto! Little drives mounted.  I guess it's better than just chucking these into the case. 

 

 

[Matacks]

The rest of drives mountirootified 

 

the P9X79 pro has eight sata connectors. 4x 3gbps and 4x 6gbps.

I'll load up six of em here for now. It's OS will remain on the M.2 ssd.

[Matacks]

Encountered a stripped HDD cage hole in the case.  I used some tank bond in attempt the get the thumbscrew to secure.   Its just a square of the tape stuck right into the end.  It sorta kinda worked.  That tape is really meant to be used on larger machine screws. 

[Matacks]

 

Front filter repaired with tape.  Also added a pull strap made from tape so that it's simple to jank out of there.

 

Single piece front grating installed.   This pulls of with a small black zip tie at the bottom.

 

 

 

Skibidi! I can't seem to locate the blank to cover the spot where the optical drive goes.  I thought i saw that kicking around somewhere.

 

I suppose I'll just keep that optical drive installed.

[Matacks]

 

finally shes all back together.  It recognized all the drives.  the cooling performance of the antec 1200 is awesome.  that just idle temperature with all case fans set to high.  this performs way better than that stuffy old coolermaster scout 2.. where this PC lived for a majority of its life.   I even had that case packed full of noctua fans.. 

ill likely use this with the case fans set to lower speed.   The case it quite loud at full tilt..  vvroooooo!!

 

theres still more work to do so setup that NAS/mc server but the build is essentially finished.  

[Matacks]

 

During the last stages of the build I had to take my wife's nice tablecloth off the table so I wouldn't ruin it.  

The table looks messed up becuase a previous tablecloth had adhered itself to the table awhile back. There was so much dust from cleaning this off  off that I had to take a claritin. 

 

 

i liberally used deoxit D100l on pretty much connectors.  I even hit the ram sticks and M.2 adapter.   Tho.  It might not be needed as much on those goldplated connectors..

 

Its a solution which gently dissolves oxidation from electrical contacts.  This motherboard is very old after all.

 

 

there it is.  The 1080ti is temporarily installed for setup purposes.  Later this will be removed.  Its getting dark so my pictures as good.

 

I was surprised to see the 1080 was preventing me from being able to fit HDDs in the center drive cage..  I guess back in those days when this case was sold the GPUs weren't so gargantuan.. 

I didn't go too nuts with the cable management.  Its nice enough.

 

the 520w corsair PSU may have been a better choice than the 760w seasonic thats in there.  This is considering that this will run sans GPU..  I'm not too concerned either way.

 

[Matacks]

Ready for NAS duty!

 

The switchbot will be used to turn it on and off when its needed..  This will not be on constantly.

[IkeaGnome]

19 hours ago, Matacks said:

the pin was bent.  

 

 

 

I fixed it with some fine tipped tweezers.

You do know that's broken right? Not just bent. There should be a piece of plastic keeping the 4 connectors from touching eachother.

Glad you got it to work, but I'd be weary of using it. Asking to bend a pin and short something out.

[Matacks]

Aha. I was not aware that this was broken.   I thought that seemed odd.

Thanks for pointing this out.  It worked ok this time.  I guess I'll order a new one or perhaps try to soldering on a new connector.

[Slottr]

-Moved to Build Logs-

[Matacks]

29 minutes ago, Slottr said:

-Moved to Build Logs-

Oh...  I posted in the wrong section. 

Whoops