Building a "legacy" PC

[OilianEiax33]

I was clearing out my basement and found a gaggle(?) of 980Tis (along with some DDR4 2133 RAM and 4TB HDDs) in a workstation. They are supposedly all still working (at least 10 years ago they were...), and I was looking for parts recommendations to build a PC with them.  

I don't know what was usually paired with a 980 Ti - mainly looking for parts for a test bench first (motherboard, CPU, etc), just to verify those parts I found are working. Any recommendations? Should I buy modern parts or is going used better?

 

Country: US

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Minecraft, Fortnite, CSGO, general browsing

Other details: What kind of resolution was expected of a 980 Ti?

 

[Hinjima]

6 minutes ago, OilianEiax33 said:

I was clearing out my basement and found a gaggle(?) of 980Tis (along with some DDR4 2133 RAM and 4TB HDDs) in a workstation. They are supposedly all still working (at least 10 years ago they were...), and I was looking for parts recommendations to build a PC with them.  

I don't know what was usually paired with a 980 Ti - mainly looking for parts for a test bench first (motherboard, CPU, etc), just to verify those parts I found are working. Any recommendations? Should I buy modern parts or is going used better?

 

Country: US

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Minecraft, Fortnite, CSGO, general browsing

Other details: What kind of resolution was expected of a 980 Ti?

 

 

In 2015 I bought a GTX 980Ti and an Intel i5-6600k, they both released the same year.. In hindsight I should have gotten the i7-6700k with HyperThreading.

It was paired with 16GB of 3200Mhz DDR4.

In 2017 I bought the Acer Predator XB271HU, a 1440p 165hz monitor! So that was my resolution for my 980Ti.  Gsync on the monitor helped a lot.

[jaslion]

Whatever you want really. A 980ti is still a usable card today especially for esports games.

 

Anything with a pcir slot and a good enough psu will do to test em or well just use the rig its in?

 

Looks like some proper dual cpu workstation no reason not to just use that to see what works. Bonus is that you already have it and its free. Looks custom made not off the shelf so good chance its real proper

[Needfuldoer]

If that's registered ECC RAM, then it will only work with a Xeon or Epyc CPU. Regular desktop processors don't know what to do with the stuff and will fail to POST.

 

You could try just taking out all but one of those GPUs from the workstation/server chassis and see what happens. 

 

That or get yourself an older prebuilt workstation with a server socket (HP Z440, Dell Precision 5820, etc) and throw one of those cards and the RAM into it.

 

Do you know what that beast did in its former life? Mining? Render farm? Somebody with deep pockets and their eyes on a Folding@Home record?

[KidKid]

3 hours ago, OilianEiax33 said:

I was clearing out my basement and found a gaggle(?) of 980Tis (along with some DDR4 2133 RAM and 4TB HDDs) in a workstation. They are supposedly all still working (at least 10 years ago they were...), and I was looking for parts recommendations to build a PC with them.  

I don't know what was usually paired with a 980 Ti - mainly looking for parts for a test bench first (motherboard, CPU, etc), just to verify those parts I found are working. Any recommendations? Should I buy modern parts or is going used better?

 

Country: US

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Minecraft, Fortnite, CSGO, general browsing

Other details: What kind of resolution was expected of a 980 Ti?

 

Those 980tis probably have NVLink or SLI or something like that. 

[OilianEiax33]

4 hours ago, jaslion said:

Whatever you want really. A 980ti is still a usable card today especially for esports games.

 

Anything with a pcir slot and a good enough psu will do to test em or well just use the rig its in?

 

Looks like some proper dual cpu workstation no reason not to just use that to see what works. Bonus is that you already have it and its free. Looks custom made not off the shelf so good chance its real proper

Good points, just gotta get some wall cables for the PSUs, it's got 3 and there 1000W each

[OilianEiax33]

2 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

If that's registered ECC RAM, then it will only work with a Xeon or Epyc CPU. Regular desktop processors don't know what to do with the stuff and will fail to POST.

 

You could try just taking out all but one of those GPUs from the workstation/server chassis and see what happens. 

 

That or get yourself an older prebuilt workstation with a server socket (HP Z440, Dell Precision 5820, etc) and throw one of those cards and the RAM into it.

 

Do you know what that beast did in its former life? Mining? Render farm? Somebody with deep pockets and their eyes on a Folding@Home record?

Yeah it is ECC. It was used for protein folding, so not super damaging like mining. Although it is like 10 years old.

[jaslion]

5 hours ago, OilianEiax33 said:

Good points, just gotta get some wall cables for the PSUs, it's got 3 and there 1000W each

Probably works with one. You can just unplug most 980ti's and then try one at a time.

 

If they work they still sell for a decent bit really