Fantastic project! Nice to see someone that can see a solution, not a problem. I want to have an indicator my self, but my case doesn't have it. Thought about doing something similar and just using one of the available CD-ROM slots and make a panel there.

awesome!

What a cool idea.

Every case needs a MHz display 😀

How much did it cost to make?

can be this done for multi cores?
i always want to know what the M/GHz fluctuation for each core without have to switch task just to see it.

samaron wrote:

Fantastic project! Nice to see someone that can see a solution, not a problem. I want to have an indicator my self, but my case doesn't have it. Thought about doing something similar and just using one of the available CD-ROM slots and make a panel there.

Τhanks! 😊
Your case just needs some modification, nothing is impossible.

rgart wrote:

awesome! What a cool idea. Every case needs a MHz display :) How much did it cost to make? […]
Show full quote

awesome!
What a cool idea.
Every case needs a MHz display 😀
How much did it cost to make?

Cost included in 1st post, exactly 2 euros 😜

Joey_sw wrote:

can be this done for multi cores?
i always want to know what the M/GHz fluctuation for each core without have to switch task just to see it.

Oh I am mistaken. These panels, even the original ones, did NOT communicate somehow with the motherboard to indicate the real speed. They just had 1-2 presets configured, toggled by the turbo switch (if any).
The purpose of the microcontroller is to switch 500 times per second each digit so as to allow the display of the whole number as your eyes cannot keep it up. It just an illusion. When I was prototyping, I tried an 100-times-per-second-refresh-period, and you could just see the controller refreshing each digit trying to make the "illusion", it was too slow. But at 500 times per sec it butter-smooth.

BUT
Reading from a COM port the real MHz of the CPU, formatting it to be displayed and actually displaying it is possible but just too much trouble and extra cables inside the case for the same result. You just need a software to throw the actual MHz rate into the COM port.

Of course, here we talk for just a simple home made panel indicator and not such advanced stuff. Oh and there exist LCD 5.25" panels who read info from usb and display it, but we speak of 40-50 euro modern market products, which is also not the case here. 😀

Great one! Love the crafty engineer stuff.

Very nicely build.
You should have build one with nixie tubes, that would be awesome.

Great thing! Wish I had such skills.

amadeus777999 wrote:

Great one! Love the crafty engineer stuff.

Thank you very much!

JaNoZ wrote:

Very nicely build.
You should have build one with nixie tubes, that would be awesome.

Heh I'd wanted a spare 5.25" bezel and some voltage amplification to... say 180 volts then 🤣 Not so safe.
Thanks!

bristlehog wrote:

Great thing! Wish I had such skills.

Thank you! The "skill" is not something static, start developing it! 😉
You don't want to see my first tries in everything that required "skill"... 😊

Is the display dynamic with an input or were the segments manually lit?

Auzner wrote:

Is the display dynamic with an input or were the segments manually lit?

As GeorgeMan already mentionned in this thread, they are set up and changed with a turbo switch.

GeorgeMan, is it possible to make it conventionnal way, with multiple T-shaped pin arrays and jumpers?

With the cheapo type of 2-3 digit 7 segment display that is being sold on ebay, nope. For jumper setting the display you need independent inputs for each digit, something that the pin assignments on these displays don't offer.
You can anyways combine 3 1digit 7 segment displays, but this would require much more effort on the soldering side and I wanted to make it a little smarter than that.

Do we have any software that can measure the mhz in real time and send this info in any format on the com port? If there is, I want to try to make a realtime display!

Bravo! Very cool project that would be almost impossible for me to do. Thanks for sharing. I wish I could have LED MHz/GHz speed displays on every single one of my pc's. I wish they didn't stop making them.

RacoonRider wrote:

As GeorgeMan already mentionned in this thread, they are set up and changed with a turbo switch.

Didn't notice the 2nd post since OP doesn't have an avatar and this forum has no prominence formatting.

GeorgeMan wrote:

With the cheapo type of 2-3 digit 7 segment display that is being sold on ebay, nope. For jumper setting the display you need independent inputs for each digit, something that the pin assignments on these displays don't offer.
You can anyways combine 3 1digit 7 segment displays, but this would require much more effort on the soldering side and I wanted to make it a little smarter than that.

There are multi-segment driver ICs that can do that. The module you use probably has a built in shift register.

As for real time cpu freq, this project blog does it with Java and outputs it to serial. Then an arduino takes in serial and drives a character LCD to display the data. The work could be adapted for 7-segments.
http://blog.workingsi.com/2013/07/lcd-system- … case-bling.html

Excellent project 😀 Love that display.
Now why did case designers decide to stop putting MHz displays on their cases I wonder?
I'm hoping at some point in the future, to build a case with nixie lights as a MHz display, but that will have to be when my financial situation gets sorted.

64bit, netburst, core, various extensions, gpu accelerated apps, bus changes, multi core, all made cpu frequency no longer the main indicator of performance. Cases stopped including it because there was no longer an external header to read it from. When multiplier and bus speed were manually set with jumpers I guess it was easier to externalize that information to a display. Look at it this way, when certain things you like are taken away, there are always ways to put it back (go backwards against current trends) and it keeps the hobby interesting as a more involved project like this thread. Like when all cases were only beige and you wanted a different color, you had to paint it, now you can just buy the color and material you'd like.

Auzner wrote:

64bit, netburst, core, various extensions, gpu accelerated apps, bus changes, multi core, all made cpu frequency no longer the main indicator of performance. Cases stopped including it because there was no longer an external header to read it from. When multiplier and bus speed were manually set with jumpers I guess it was easier to externalize that information to a display. Look at it this way, when certain things you like are taken away, there are always ways to put it back (go backwards against current trends) and it keeps the hobby interesting as a more involved project like this thread. Like when all cases were only beige and you wanted a different color, you had to paint it, now you can just buy the color and material you'd like.

It was more of a rhetorical question 😉

LunarG wrote:

It was more of a rhetorical question 😉

🤣

Also there wasn't ever 'an external header to read it from', the readout of these displays were just set by myriad jumpers. I like them as much as the next man but I can understand why they fazed them out - they're just a gimmick and pain in the arse to set up.

badmojo wrote:

LunarG wrote:

It was more of a rhetorical question 😉

🤣

Also there wasn't ever 'an external header to read it from', the readout of these displays were just set by myriad jumpers. I like them as much as the next man but I can understand why they fazed them out - they're just a gimmick and pain in the arse to set up.

I know. I was not the one who mentioned "an external header to read it from" 😉

This is a lot like the design I had in mind for my ancient full-tower case's display.

Key difference is that I was going to use an Atmel AVR (probably an ATTiny45) and a constant current serial shift register (like TLC5916).

Love your work! 😀