My terrible test bench

[The-G]

A couple of months ago I put together a test bench that I could use for testing old hardware from my eBay business. It consisted of a Pentium 4@2.66Ghz, 2GB of DDR RAM and an Nvida FX 5200 graphics card. It was pretty crap, but all the parts came in a joblot so I just had to slot everything in and I was good to go. Here's a picture of it if you're interested (WinXP ftw):

 

However last month I decided to give it an upgrade, so I bought a cheap 775 motherboard off eBay that came with a dual core CPU (It was nothing special, just a cheap foxconn board and a pentium dual core). When I bought that motherboard I remembered watching a video about a 771 to 775 mod that allowed you to use some of the older Xeon CPUs in consumer 775 motherboards, and I had the intention of replacing the pentium with a quad core Xeon later down the line. In the end though I ended up buying the Xeon (an X5450) and the converter sticker on the same day.

 

When all the parts arrived it didn't take long to put it all together. The most nerve-racking part was cutting the tabs on the CPU socket so that the Xeon would fit. It took me a couple of tries but eventually I cut enough off (A quick tip if you plan on doing this mod is to buy a cheap 775 CPU (I just used the pentium dual core)  to use as a guide, so if you do screw up all you risk losing it a cheap CPU). After putting the converter sticker on the CPU (The mod requires a sticker to short some pins on the CPU for it to work), I slotted it in the motherboard, put on the cooler and... it didn't boot.

 

I proceeded to waste several hours wondering why (I even brought in a projector from the other room and had that set up as it was the only other portable display I had that had VGA), but eventually I found out that it was my own stupidity. I had put the sticker on upside down - *facepalm*.

So after putting on a new sticker the right way round (Thank god I bought two), the system booted up! (Yay). Currently It's still just sitting on a motherboard box, but I plan to get/make a test-bench case at some point in the future.

Here's the full spec list if you're interested:

 

CPU: Intel Xeon X5450

GPU: Whatever's lying around, currently an Nvidia 6200LE

RAM: 1.5GB of DDR2 (I desperately need to buy more RAM)

Motherboard: Foxconn G31MXP 775 Motherboard

PSU: Generic Dell 250W Power Supply

HDD: 80GB IDE Maxtor Hard drive (I'm gonna get an SSD at some point, this was just the only drive I had at the time)

OS: Windows 7

Other: There's a sound blaster card in there at the moment, but I was just testing that out.

 

And here's some pictures:

 

So yeah, that's my testbench. It's pretty bad, and the cabling is a mess (Not much I can really do about that atm, and the PSU has really short cables so it's hard to manage them at all), but it does what I need it to do. The main things I want to do to it next are:

 

Buy an SSD

Get more RAM

Change the GPU

Buy a new power supply

Change the motherboard

 

Anyway, if you read this far, then thanks for taking a look! I'd love hear your feedback and also to see your test-benches (I'm sure they're better than mine)

[Waqas409]

Looks great i like you also moded xeon processor on lga 775 motherboard.

Haha i had the same problem kinda, when i moded x5460 on lga 775 it does not booted then the problem  was it was not seated on cpu socket, then i properly seated it and now its working fine, using it for my personal use, gaming/editing etc.

Tho my board has nice Overclocking features ( p5k-premium ), im rocking my x5460 @4ghz smooth n stable. Pretty bad ass performance.

 

2Days ago Tech City (Youtuber) uploaded a video about moding x5460 with gtx 1060 and did 1440p gaming, pretty impressive performance by this processor.
Im also going to sell my gtx 960 and will buy gtx 1060.

 

My main issue with these is most of the LGA 775 motherboard only support upto 8GB ram so im kinda stuck at there.

 

However i was doing benchmarks n stuff of x5460 @4Ghz on CPU Z validator, here are the results and these are impressive.

[The-G]

Wow that CPU is pretty impressive, and yeah I've heard of Tech City, that's where I saw the video on the 771 to 775 mod, although I haven't seen the one you mentioned, I'll have to take a look. 

[Guest]

I will share my "test bench" set-up with you. Maybe it will get you some ideas!

 

First off, the picture:

 

The story behind this set-up is, it's the inside of my old computer. I've upgraded the system with new mobo/CPU and ram. However, this old (really old) hardware still works fine, and I will put it inside a new case my GF bought. But my GF lives far away from me, and so I wanted to install things so it will just be dropping in this hardware in the new case. All software already installed... So I had to connect all the hardware, to be able to do this.

 

On this picture, you can see a mobo back plate, with side plate to screw in your PCI-e cards and such. It came from a really crapy computer case, which I threw away. I just kept the mobo back plate, so I could savely use a mobo outside of a real case. (and maybe use it as the core for a "scratch build case")

 

Also drilled some extra holes, to mount the 2.5" laptop HDD to the plate. Can't really mount the DVD drive, but it only had to be connected to the computer, to install the OS. After the OS install, I could remove it. I might still get some holes in the plate, to mount the PSU to this piece of metal...

 

This is an older picture. Currently I did some cable management. For example, the power button and LED's have been cleaned up, and fixed to the backplate with some zip ties. Also cleaned up the PSU cables, with zip ties.

 

TLDR: Maybe you can also get a backplate of an older case. It's better then mounting your hardware on to a cardboard box. It also helps mount the cards, so they don't wobble that much.

[Waqas409]

15 minutes ago, The-G said:

Wow that CPU is pretty impressive, and yeah I've heard of Tech City, that's where I saw the video on the 771 to 775 mod, although I haven't seen the one you mentioned, I'll have to take a look. 

yea its worth checking and kinda forced me to buy 1060 lol  ( before this video i thought x5460 cant handle gtx 1060 but yay!! )

Video's Image thumbnails is "Can it Play Bf1" or title "The $360 1440p bf1 Gaming Moster, Ft. the deepcool Dukase V2" 

[The-G]

7 minutes ago, Dutch-stoner said:

TLDR: Maybe you can also get a backplate of an older case. It's better then mounting your hardware on to a cardboard box. It also helps mount the cards, so they don't wobble that much.

That looks pretty good. I might try buying an old PC case (I don't have any lying around unfortunately) that I can salvage the back plate/motherboard tray from - In fact I think you can buy them separately, although I'm not sure how much they'd cost. 

 

[The-G]

3 minutes ago, Waqas409 said:

yea its worth checking and kinda forced me to buy 1060 lol  ( before this video i thought x5460 cant handle gtx 1060 but yay!! )

Video's Image thumbnails is "Can it Play Bf1" or title "The $360 1440p bf1 Gaming Moster, Ft. the deepcool Dukase V2" 

Yeah these old Xeons seem to be really good. There was an LTT video a while ago that looked at running duel Xeons in a server board as the platform for a gaming rig, and it was really good for the price.

[Waqas409]

Just now, The-G said:

Yeah these old Xeons seem to be really good. There was an LTT video a while ago that looked at running duel Xeons in a server board as the platform for a gaming rig, and it was really good for the price.

But its not worth buying whole xeon machine just for gaming because those server board does not have the compatability of overclocking so its kinda waste.
These old xeon chips shines when we overclock it. 

[The-G]

4 minutes ago, Waqas409 said:

But its not worth buying whole xeon machine just for gaming because those server board does not have the compatability of overclocking so its kinda waste.
These old xeon chips shines when we overclock it. 

Yeah true, that's why this mod is so cool. I should overclock mine a bit, although I doubt my motherboard will get me very far. I think I'll upgrade it to a better one at some point.

 

[Waqas409]

Just now, The-G said:

Yeah true, that's why this mod is so cool. I should overclock mine a bit, although I doubt my motherboard will get me very far. I think I'll upgrade it to a better one at some point.

 

You can get Asus p5k-V or p5k-premium its gonna cost you $20-$25 ( used ), they are very good when it comes to overclocking + they support this mod. 

[Guest]

18 minutes ago, The-G said:

In fact I think you can buy them separately, although I'm not sure how much they'd cost. 

The "donor case" was rivited together. I only had to drill those rivits out, and I got myself that tray. It came out of a garbage find computer btw.

 

I've also seen a local (metal)scrapyard, which had several broken desktop cases... I'm sure that there would be a usable tray somewhere in there. Also thrift shops get OLD computers. Just ask them if you can look at their pc junk pile. After all, you are only looking for the mobo tray. (and maybe a HHD tray to screw on?)

[The-G]

4 minutes ago, Waqas409 said:

You can get Asus p5k-V or p5k-premium its gonna cost you $20-$25 ( used ), they are very good when it comes to overclocking + they support this mod. 

I'll have to keep an eye out for them. Currently the cheapest p5k-premium motherboard I can see on eBay is £55 ($68). There's also a P5K-VM, is that the same as the p5k-v? It's a better price at £35($43).

[The-G]

2 minutes ago, Dutch-stoner said:

The "donor case" was rivited together. I only had to drill those rivits out, and I got myself that tray. It came out of a garbage find computer btw.

 

I've also seen a local (metal)scrapyard, which had several broken desktop cases... I'm sure that there would be a usable tray somewhere in there. Also thrift shops get OLD computers. Just ask them if you can look at their pc junk pile. After all, you are only looking for the mobo tray. (and maybe a HHD tray to screw on?)

Cool, I'll have to see if I can find a thrift shop with some old PCs. If not then eBay usually has some old/scrap computers for sale. Thanks

[Waqas409]

11 minutes ago, The-G said:

I'll have to keep an eye out for them. Currently the cheapest p5k-premium motherboard I can see on eBay is £55 ($68). There's also a P5K-VM, is that the same as the p5k-v? It's a better price at £35($43).

V and VM both are different.
But damn these are still expensive there. 

[The-G]

Just now, Waqas409 said:

V and VM both are different.
But damn these are still expensive there. 

Yeah prices suck over here