Skyscraper wrote:

Evert wrote:

Thanks! Looks like in my over-enthusiasm to recap the board I burnt the sides of two of the capacitors. Do I need to replace the […]
Show full quote

Thanks! Looks like in my over-enthusiasm to recap the board I burnt the sides of two of the capacitors. Do I need to replace them or will it be okay?

It shouldnt matter at all.

That's a relief! I would rather die, than do that to myself again. Anyway, here are some photos of my handy-work:

Good work! It gets easier with practice.
I like EpoX boards, they just need caps replaced, and now that you've done that it shouldn't ever need them again.

Great job!

Thanks for the kind words shamino and Phil. A special thanks to Phil for actually inspiring me to try the Socket 370 platform out. It's quite amazing how far ahead of their time EPoX was. For an early 2000s board it has a lot of overclocking features and BIOS options that wasn't available on a lot of boards from that era. Really a shame that their choice of poor passive components lead to their ultimate demise.

As for cooling the VRMs, I was thinking of getting these heatsinks:

Hi Evert,

Sorry just seen your post now, PM me if you need any graphics, sound, network cards etc. I've got a lot of them and I'm sure I can give you some for free. I've got a DFI P2XBL Rev C slot 1 440BX motherboard as well that you can have, caps all good and POSTS perfectly. Need to clear out some of my crap.

I'm in Roodepoort, so not too far away.

Cheers

Awesome man! I'll send you one tomorrow, then we can talk turkey.

Yes! It's thread revival time... I'm looking around for a potential power supply for these P3s and I seem to have found a good candidate: 550W Gigabyte GreenMax Plus. It supposedly can provide 25A on the 5V line which is very similar to what a 250W power supply would've done back in the day. Since it is a Bronze rated 12V power supply one could expect it to be reasonably efficient and quiet. One thing that does bother me though: it's made by AcBel Polytech. I can't really find any consistent information about them or their products. Jonnyguru reviewed a 900W unit of theirs and it scored fairly well. The soldering work on the PCB was pretty good, compared to what you would get on CWT-built units. Gigabyte says that it has a "Japanese made main capacitor". So, this basically means that you have a Panasonic, Nichicon or United Chemi-Con (Nippon Chemi-Con) capacitor on the primary side and probably horrible Teapo or CapXon ones on the second airy side. I typically buy SeaSonic or Delta built power supplies, since I completely trust these companies, but I don't want to fork out another $100 for another 520W SeaSonic unit. Are these Gigabyte GreenMax Plus power supplies good and worth the money or should I rather go with something else?

Hello! On that Gigabyte powersupply I just want to note that it claims to use solid capacitors for the secondaries and Japanese primaries. From the info on their website it looks like a good unit at least. I know that AcBel made good supplies back in the day (I have a massive 500watt server supply for a dual Slot 1 system that they made that still works)

Well that's very reassuring! I'm going to place an order for one immediately. At $55 it's a good deal. Thanks.