Show off your old and retro computer parts

[X-System]

4 hours ago, Schnoz said:

It's the quad-core "Clovertown" Xeon X5355. It was built on the large 65-nm process with 8 MB of cache. Its TDP is 120 watts which explains why it's so hot.

In the past, I had a configuration with 2x Xeon X5355. It's hot but it was great during the winter

 

But during the summer, it was hell like the sauna and it was with Radeon HD 4870 X2...

[Bitter]

Wood grain video card LOLZ

[Jstagzsr]

I bought two of these for 3$. Lol.

 

Then upgraded to dual x5450's I believe. For like 26$..

 

You can't beat old xeons. Some of the cheapest CPUs on the market that still have great performance.. quad core 2ghz isn't much, but 8cores @4ghz is (dual quad core x5450's).... my i7 4790k is 8threads at 4.8ghz and it's a 3-4 hundred dollar processor still..

 

Price to performance ratio, you can't find better than old xeons. I love em!!!

[Bitter]

Eh the IPC/watt is pretty poor on the old Core2 and even 1st gen Core-i stuff. My Xeon X3470 (roughly an i7 870) at 4ghz is out classed by an i5 4590 easily in iterations per second in Prime95, it's still  beaten by an i3 4130 with 1/2 the cores and 1/2 the threads, both CPU's consume less than 1/2 the power that the Xeon does. My i7 4950HQ at 4ghz all core uses 80W and HANDILY beats the Xeon at the same speed and uses literally 1/2 the power. You could replace a pair of the 771 Xeons, even overclocked, with a single Haswell i7 and come out on top in performance. If you've got any consideration for your power bill that's a huge cost difference that certainly offsets the initial cost of the Haswell setup, especially if you're doing 24/7 operations.

 

That being said, for day to day use and some gaming even the old 1st gen i3/5/7 and the Core2 based stuff is perfectly fine most of the time. The power consumption under partial load like that is pretty inconsequential.

[SPARTAN VI]

Just got my hands on an EVGA GeForce 7800 GT 256MB (image taken from Google search). Only plans I have for it are to display it. Don't really have a need for a circa 2005 build, atm:

 

[Jstagzsr]

6 hours ago, Bitter said:

Eh the IPC/watt is pretty poor on the old Core2 and even 1st gen Core-i stuff. My Xeon X3470 (roughly an i7 870) at 4ghz is out classed by an i5 4590 easily in iterations per second in Prime95, it's still  beaten by an i3 4130 with 1/2 the cores and 1/2 the threads, both CPU's consume less than 1/2 the power that the Xeon does. My i7 4950HQ at 4ghz all core uses 80W and HANDILY beats the Xeon at the same speed and uses literally 1/2 the power. You could replace a pair of the 771 Xeons, even overclocked, with a single Haswell i7 and come out on top in performance. If you've got any consideration for your power bill that's a huge cost difference that certainly offsets the initial cost of the Haswell setup, especially if you're doing 24/7 operations.

 

That being said, for day to day use and some gaming even the old 1st gen i3/5/7 and the Core2 based stuff is perfectly fine most of the time. The power consumption under partial load like that is pretty inconsequential.

yeah but can you get a pair of matched any of those cpu's for 3$? and run current games with them? maybe in some freak occorence on ebay or something but in general, i think not. price to performance ratio was what i was talking about. and for some reason the old xeons are dirt cheap but still with decent power on most of them. of coarse youre gonna have cpu's that beat them. in tdp, in power, in iterations per second, in benchmark scores, etc.. but not in price to performance. and none of those other cpus you can throw in a dual socket mobo and double your power for pennies. dont get me wrong, ill take an i7 almost anything over any old xeon if theyre both the same price. but ive never bought an old i7 for under 5 bucks.

 

[Bitter]

2 hours ago, Jstagzsr said:

yeah but can you get a pair of matched any of those cpu's for 3$? and run current games with them? maybe in some freak occorence on ebay or something but in general, i think not. price to performance ratio was what i was talking about. and for some reason the old xeons are dirt cheap but still with decent power on most of them. of coarse youre gonna have cpu's that beat them. in tdp, in power, in iterations per second, in benchmark scores, etc.. but not in price to performance. and none of those other cpus you can throw in a dual socket mobo and double your power for pennies. dont get me wrong, ill take an i7 almost anything over any old xeon if theyre both the same price. but ive never bought an old i7 for under 5 bucks.

 

But you'd need to build 4 whole dual CPU systems to match one i5 4590 (which sell for between $45 and $65). The space needed, the cases, motherboards, RAM, graphics cards, power supplies, hard drives, network cables, switch, KVM switch (if you're not consoling in), AND power needed to run 4 dual socket systems is going to end up costing as much or more than that single Haswell system.

 

I'll tell you what, let's compare apples to apples. I'll run a Prime95 Version 29.8 build 3 benchmark on each of my 3 currently built systems. Xeon X3470 @ 3.2Ghz 4C8T, i5 4590 @ 3.3Ghz 4C4T, and i7 4950HQ @4.0Ghz 4C8T. The i7 has 1866Mhz memory so it's results will be a little higher than the scaling of the other two but that's another advantage to a more modern platform, faster memory in terms of bandwidth and overall latency. I can also run Cinebench R15 on all 3 for CPU only tests and we can compare multithreaded to singlecore performance to see the gains from changes in architectures through the generations of CPU. I don't have any Core2 stuff currently built but I could probably test bench it on my basement floor, except my broken toe makes going up and down those stairs a bit of a pain so I'll pass on that now.

 

Deal?

Speaking of deals, check this out, it's not too bad and opens the path to hex-core CPU's later on.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-S5520SC-Dual-LGA1366-Motherboard-2-E5620-8GB-ECC-Coolers-I-O-Shield/264327881175?epid=74083815&hash=item3d8b2b61d7:g:KtwAAOSwrLFc4Fcd

And hex core isn't even expensive anymore.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Matched-Pair-of-Intel-Xeon-X5670-2-93GHz-Six-Core-SLBV7-Processor-FREE-SHIP/264330671500?epid=82112496&hash=item3d8b55f58c:g:7f8AAOSwFp5cwjKp

 

These were just first page best match sorted finds, I'm sure digging harder or bidding you could score way better deals than these.

[Bitter]

I ended up using CBR15 because it spits out a simple score that's easy to work with.

Ok, single X3470 (cause they're only single socket) that cost me $33 to buy.  CBR15 multi threaded score of 498 for 6 cents per point, single thread score of 97 for 34 cents per point. For some reason this CPU isn't boosting properly in this motherboard, it's not officially supported so that could be why. It should do 3.2Ghz all core and 3.6Ghz single core so I may OC it to 3.6Ghz and re-do the single core test later but I don't expect to pickup a lot of points there and may not bother. I'm running it at 1.1V as that's roughly where it should be running, it was defaulting to 1.3V with this board, again likely because it's not actually officially supported so there's some weirdness with it.

i7 4950HQ bought at $133, 808 multi threaded for 16 cents per CBR15 point, 162 single threaded for 83 cents per point.

Sounds like a pretty terrible price to performance there yea? Well it's not actually. The Xeon sucks down 143W running CBR15! The i7 does the same CBR15 run at 48W and scores 808 points!! If I were to run the X3470 loaded similar to the CBR15 run 24x7 for a year it would cost $130 at an average electrical rate. The i7 4950HQ OVERCLOCKED to 4Ghz all core would cost $42 and perform things roughly 60% faster which isn't an inconsequential bump in performance and reduction in cost. The $100 up front cost is offset in one year of use if you're going to stick it in the corner to fold or prime or whatever 24x7. This is why I'm saying that really old hardware just doesn't make sense for those kinds of projects, the low initial cost is very appealing but once you math things out it's just not financially sensible.

 

It's like putting an old fridge in the garage, you think you're going to save money buying in bulk and freezing a bunch of food but the cost to keep the food far outweighs the savings of buying in bulk or even the fuel and transit costs to get it.

[Jstagzsr]

7 hours ago, Bitter said:

I ended up using CBR15 because it spits out a simple score that's easy to work with.

Ok, single X3470 (cause they're only single socket) that cost me $33 to buy.  CBR15 multi threaded score of 498 for 6 cents per point, single thread score of 97 for 34 cents per point. For some reason this CPU isn't boosting properly in this motherboard, it's not officially supported so that could be why. It should do 3.2Ghz all core and 3.6Ghz single core so I may OC it to 3.6Ghz and re-do the single core test later but I don't expect to pickup a lot of points there and may not bother. I'm running it at 1.1V as that's roughly where it should be running, it was defaulting to 1.3V with this board, again likely because it's not actually officially supported so there's some weirdness with it.

i7 4950HQ bought at $133, 808 multi threaded for 16 cents per CBR15 point, 162 single threaded for 83 cents per point.

Sounds like a pretty terrible price to performance there yea? Well it's not actually. The Xeon sucks down 143W running CBR15! The i7 does the same CBR15 run at 48W and scores 808 points!! If I were to run the X3470 loaded similar to the CBR15 run 24x7 for a year it would cost $130 at an average electrical rate. The i7 4950HQ OVERCLOCKED to 4Ghz all core would cost $42 and perform things roughly 60% faster which isn't an inconsequential bump in performance and reduction in cost. The $100 up front cost is offset in one year of use if you're going to stick it in the corner to fold or prime or whatever 24x7. This is why I'm saying that really old hardware just doesn't make sense for those kinds of projects, the low initial cost is very appealing but once you math things out it's just not financially sensible.

 

It's like putting an old fridge in the garage, you think you're going to save money buying in bulk and freezing a bunch of food but the cost to keep the food far outweighs the savings of buying in bulk or even the fuel and transit costs to get it.

lol. you cant count in electrical price when comparing cpu's dude. thats not fair. I for example get included rg&e in my apartment. other people may pay 1$ a month, others may pay 800$ a month. were talking about price to performance, not price to performance only relative to overall power used. If you take the power consumption out of the equation is sounds like you proved my point!! i feel like youre adding things in to make your side of the debate sound better. and since this is obviously nothing more than an opinion post anyway, thats fine for your side, but on my side im gonna leave out the cost of electricity. in which case my side comes out on top.. so were both correct depending on if you concider power consumption. lol.

dint get me wrong, i would much MUCH rather have anything newer, more powerful, and less power hungry, anyday of the week. who wouldnt. but thats only if money wasnt an issue.. if i absolutely HAD to build a PC today and only had 2-3 hundred bucks to build a complete syetm, i would absolutely go dual xeon. but if i could wait (like i did to build my 4790k system) and i could save up money then id go i7 or i9. all day. clear winner in my book when power is the only factor that matters ultimately.

[Jstagzsr]

Found these in a stashed box today. 

[Bitter]

1 hour ago, Jstagzsr said:

lol. you cant count in electrical price when comparing cpu's dude. thats not fair. I for example get included rg&e in my apartment. other people may pay 1$ a month, others may pay 800$ a month. were talking about price to performance, not price to performance only relative to overall power used. If you take the power consumption out of the equation is sounds like you proved my point!! i feel like youre adding things in to make your side of the debate sound better. and since this is obviously nothing more than an opinion post anyway, thats fine for your side, but on my side im gonna leave out the cost of electricity. in which case my side comes out on top.. so were both correct depending on if you concider power consumption. lol.

dint get me wrong, i would much MUCH rather have anything newer, more powerful, and less power hungry, anyday of the week. who wouldnt. but thats only if money wasnt an issue.. if i absolutely HAD to build a PC today and only had 2-3 hundred bucks to build a complete syetm, i would absolutely go dual xeon. but if i could wait (like i did to build my 4790k system) and i could save up money then id go i7 or i9. all day. clear winner in my book when power is the only factor that matters ultimately.

I still want to see what those dual Xeon do in CBR15 though, see how close or far you are from other CPU's since it's hard to find scores for such old/exotic hardware.

I clocked my X3470 up to 3.8Ghz and it consumes an even 300W of power at 260 amps which is ludicrous. I don't mean the whole system uses 300W, I mean just the CPU uses 300W. It scores 600 in CBR15 at that speed but the over doubled power consumption doesn't seem worth it. The water cooling system from 2002 is handling it but that water block isn't really made for that level of power, temps immediately go up 20C and rise to about 30C over idle peaking out at around 70C with a 36C temp on the probe in the CPU block edge. I think with a more modern CPU block temps would be better but the Koolance control board NEEDS that temp probe touching the CPU block, so I'd have to grind a little hole into anything I get. Since I want to go AMD in the future with this case I feel like any Intel block I buy would be a waste unless it's really cheap but would a really cheap block be any better than what I have now even?

[Bitter]

1 hour ago, Jstagzsr said:

Found these in a stashed box today. 

 

I have the same XMS2 but in 1066 speeds, that was some good RAM in the day. I think my Pentium 4 system had some DDR 400 that was blue heat spreaders...uhhhh Kingston HyperX I believe. I'll have to dig through my box of RAM and other stuff and do a big post of my junk while I sort it out better and organize it. One of these days.

[SPARTAN VI]

Rig I nabbed from my brother-in-law. I actually spec'd this for him back in 2005ish. Here it is in all its early 2000-era mismatched RGB-less spaghetti cable management glory:

 

 

CPU: Athlon 64 3200+ (s939) w/ stock HSF
Motherboard: MSI K8N Neo 4 Platinum ver. 1
Memory: 2GB (4 x 512MB) DDR-400 (2x Corsair CMX Platinum Series and 2x OCZ Platinum Series)
Videocard: EVGA GeForce 7800 GT 256MB
Powersupply: Antec NEOPOWER 480W Modular Active PFC PSU
Case: Thermaltake Soprano VB1000BWS Midtower Case

[Jstagzsr]

58 minutes ago, Bitter said:

I still want to see what those dual Xeon do in CBR15 though, see how close or far you are from other CPU's since it's hard to find scores for such old/exotic hardware.

I clocked my X3470 up to 3.8Ghz and it consumes an even 300W of power at 260 amps which is ludicrous. I don't mean the whole system uses 300W, I mean just the CPU uses 300W. It scores 600 in CBR15 at that speed but the over doubled power consumption doesn't seem worth it. The water cooling system from 2002 is handling it but that water block isn't really made for that level of power, temps immediately go up 20C and rise to about 30C over idle peaking out at around 70C with a 36C temp on the probe in the CPU block edge. I think with a more modern CPU block temps would be better but the Koolance control board NEEDS that temp probe touching the CPU block, so I'd have to grind a little hole into anything I get. Since I want to go AMD in the future with this case I feel like any Intel block I buy would be a waste unless it's really cheap but would a really cheap block be any better than what I have now even?

just buy one of the universal blocks that come with the mounting hardware for both amd and intel. thats an option anyway. so you dont buy a waterblock just to throw it in a box of computer parts when you upgrade.

ive neen debating cheating on my wife (intel) with that sexy new girl in town (3900x) only because shes so much easier to get my hands on seeing how shes so much cheaper and has the same or better performance as the top tier 9900k's.. but i always feel not as excited about amd hardware. idk why.. ive just always had intel as my main rigs for the most part.. i did buy an amd phenom x4 black edition in my main gaming rig in 2009ish.. and i do own a phenom x6 right now that i have in my living room media pc/son 's gaming pc i buult him.. but my main rigs and all my main rigs ive ever had that ive been super happy with have all been intel. But when intel wants to jack all their prices up crazy high you kinda have to go with what you can afford. and im gonna have to upgrade asap.. my pc has been screwing up lately. i have no idea whats happeninig or why its doing it, but sometimes when i start my pc (sometimes 20 times in a row and i have to keep hitting the reset button) it will get hung up on code 9C and/or code 64 (asus Z97 deluxe). and it will cause my entire pc to just sit there hung up and not finish booting.. then today i take my pc out of sleep mode and it freezes up and wont let me move the mouse or type or even hit ctrl/alt/del.. so i had to reset.. then after finally egtting it started up again my screen went crazy and had little green squares all over it, then my pc crashed immediately after and wouldnt start back up for another like 25 reset button pushes and hangs.. and now its back up and running and everything is running 100% perfect..  ive tried going back to stock speeds, disabling turbo, overclocking again, pushing overclock harder, raising voltages, diabling and enabling xmp, undervolting cpu and ram, running the asus uefi self overclock utility, ive tried taking all but 1 stick of ram ouyyt, and alternating sticks, ive tried unplugging everything usb, ive tried unplugging everything pcie, ive tried reseating the cpu, etc.. i tried everything i could think of to try.. and i still have no idea what the problem is. but sometimes itll work, sometimes it wont.. itll always start working after several resets of it not working, and usually only takes a few minutes to get it going when it does screw up, but im at a loss for what to do. and for once this forum was no help in figuring it out.. so ive settled on the fact that my baby is dying and im gonna have to start saving to buy the pieces for a new build one paycheck ata time.. which is gonna take literally years, but i need to start. i cant be without a (good) pc. i have computers laying ariound all over my house so ill still have a computer regardless, but for work i need a good pc. i only just got done building this pc maybe a little over a year ago and im already having to upgrade. its sad because i LOVE this pc.

asus z97 deluxe

i7 4790k 4.8ghz
asetek 120mm aio
32gb (4x8) dual channel 2000mhz ddr3 ripjaws
rx580 8gb
80+ silver 750 watt evga supernova psu
128gb samsung nvme SSD (c drive)

500gb HDD (d drive)

500gb HDD (e drive)

1tb HDD (f drive)

1TB HDD (g drive)

480gb ssd (h drive)

27" 1080p 60htz samsung panel (that runs at 1440p and 4k)
24" 1080p 60htz HP panel)


thats my baby



 

[Bitter]

My guess would be PSU starting to go. I had a PSU go bad a few times and with some of them shortly before it wouldn't boot things would get unstable and then fail to boot up for a while then hang in post then finally boot and sometimes be OK or sometimes crash out. Or they would just not turn back on. One of them just made a loud click when it went while in use and scared me half to death, I thought it took the system with it. Another one I shut down and then it would never power back on. So far no PSU fires, just a hard drive fire once due to a head crash.

 

I feel ya about the lack of excitement for the Ryzen 3000, seems to be no overclocking head room currently and not much you can do to tinker around with it.

[Jstagzsr]

2 minutes ago, Bitter said:

My guess would be PSU starting to go. I had a PSU go bad a few times and with some of them shortly before it wouldn't boot things would get unstable and then fail to boot up for a while then hang in post then finally boot and sometimes be OK or sometimes crash out. Or they would just not turn back on. One of them just made a loud click when it went while in use and scared me half to death, I thought it took the system with it. Another one I shut down and then it would never power back on. So far no PSU fires, just a hard drive fire once due to a head crash.

hmmm.. if all the problem is is a going bad psu ill be freakin ecstatic! i have a bunch of psu's laying around. nothing crazy powerful, this was my best one, but im gonna definitely try to swap one out and see what happens. awesome!!!!!!! i hope youre right!

[BrianTheElectrician]

Picked up a bunch of computer stuff from a guy I met at a garage sale that's  been sitting in his shed for I don't know how many years. Most so far doesn't work but also got some really neat stuff. Probably my favorite score is this old Thinkpad 380D (Actually 2 of them! Other one seems to have a bad LCD though.)

 

Pentium 150mhz, 32mb EDO ram, 1.3Gb Hard disk and a Neomagic Magicgraph 128ZV with I believe 1Mb of ram. Did a fresh install of Windows 95, installed Visual Studio 6 as well as the desktop shell update and Office 97 Pro. Already used about 3/4 of the hard disk space so far haha. Won't be using it for games though, due to the passive matrix LCD panel (800x600). Linus thought the screen on my old Compaq wasn't that great, well, it runs many circles around the one on this machine. CD-Rom and Floppy drives both work too! Just had to replace the CMOS battery (CR1220).

[greenhorn]

59 minutes ago, BrianTheElectrician said:

[...] old Thinkpad 380D (Actually 2 of them! Other one seems to have a bad LCD though.)

[...]

They really look nice. I have almost forgotten how bulky laptops were not that long ago. The one with the bad LCD probably could even be used for a sleeper PC build (as a tower with desktop PC parts) with the LCD/LCD frame/backplate acting as side panel of this case.

[ianspy1]

I got an old IBM notebook with a led battery, a 128kb harddrive and a old athlone wich I sodderd to a usbcable as an handwarmer xD

[BrianTheElectrician]

18 hours ago, greenhorn said:

They really look nice. I have almost forgotten how bulky laptops were not that long ago. The one with the bad LCD probably could even be used for a sleeper PC build (as a tower with desktop PC parts) with the LCD/LCD frame/backplate acting as side panel of this case.

Yeah that would be an interesting build for sure, but the rest of the system seems to work fine so I'll probably try to fix it first, or set it up with DOS for use with an external screen. Maybe try and find a active matrix screen for it too instead of the passive if the rest of it works fine too. The screen is definitely the weak point of these systems.

 

I already have a lot of desktops/towers from this time period too, so if nothing else will keep it for parts for this one. It really is amazing too, just looking at my old Compaq even it is a lot slimmer than these are, and just going to the early 2000's things really start to become a form factor not far off from what we have today.

 

[BrianTheElectrician]

Been going through some of my old processors tonight too, Pentiums, Socket 462 Athlons and Durons, old PIIIs, K6's and LGA 775's. Heres the Pentiums, old AMD chips and the 775's. Many more Pentiums in complete systems yet too

 

Slowly sorting through the droves testing stuff, seeing what works and what doesn't.

[Jstagzsr]

just saw these on facebook marketplace. 40 bucks for all 4. no other info but cool enough to slap on this thread. 


https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/2421261154817911/

[SuperNerd Kid]

On 12/19/2013 at 3:26 PM, Lanoi said:

E4500? yum. Currently have DDR2 in my system, so I can't show it off. Don't have anything old because I'm 12.

 

EDIT -- 23-7-14 I do not run my system with DDR2 anymore. I still have a Core 2 Quad Q9500, a E7500, and a E5300.

I am a kid and i have old stuff. I have a dell dimension 8100

 

 

[SuperNerd Kid]

5 minutes ago, Schnoz said:

so is the kid or the rig retro

 

Could we have pics? Thanks!

I Don't have a way to take a picture or access one of my own as i don't have a working computer at this moment. i am on my brothers computer. here is a online photo

specs are a pentium 4 1.3 GHZ 128MB RDRAM Nvidia Geforce 2 MX 20 GB 5400 Rpm Hdd And Windows XP

btw shcnoz. your photo is messed up

[Helly]

Here's my dual p3 system which i fixed. Yes.... very cringe worthy, but it works so i don't care .

 

Well first the before pictures i guess.

 

 

So i bought replacement caps after searching what i needed and replaced them....

 

 

Yup, they are bigger, better ones :D. Well now the cringe pictures then..... have fun

 

 

 

One more fun thing to mention about this system. The 2 fans on the heatsinks are always running at full speed, causing a lot of noise. Replacing them is difficult since i dont have any replacements. But i noticed they are diagonally about 120mm apart..... so ehm, i used some zip ties to put a 120mm fan over them. Cools them nicely with a lot less noise haha :D. Would have used screws but it turned about they just OVER 120mm apart... so zip ties to the rescue. It's PSU is now officially been retired though, so i can't use it anymore till i get a replacement :(.