VOGONS


First post, by PcBytes

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Pretty much as the title says - my first dual-core 939 system. Not 100% period accurate - I've tried keeping the parts within a 2 year margin, except for the DVD drive, and I suspect the GPU too.

Specs:

DFI Infinity nF4 SLi mobo

Probably the most spartan SLi 939 choice I've ever seen. Also the most rock stable - I don't think I've seen ASUS boards come anywhere close to being this rock solid. Originally wanted to get a A8N-SLi Deluxe, though I guess the layout of the DFI is a much better choice over ASUS' cookie-cutter mobo layout.

KeyMouse CX-6059 case
Nice case, can be carried like the good ole' LAN party days. A bit yellowed on the front, so I guess I will have to look into retrobrighting it. Originally housed some LGA775 Pentium 4 on a P5LD2 SE Rev 2.0, and two 250GB HDDs.

AMD Athlon 64 x2 4600+ Socket 939
The main star. Awfully hard to find, and yet didn't set me back a whole fortune. Unlike the Opteron build I plan on snagging, which also runs the Lanparty nF4 SLi-D version of the Infinity I have, which isn't anywhere near cheap. I do get a 6800GT bundled with that Opteron tho.

4GB PC3200 RAM

4 sticks, 1GB each. Did take a little search to find sticks that would all run happily at 128bit, CL3 and DDR400 at the same time.

Leadtek Winfast Geforce 8800GTX TDH 768MB DDR3 384-bit

About the fastest GPU I could find for it that didn't, again, break the bank. Repasted with MX6 recently as the original paste was harder than concrete - I had to use Zippo lighter fluid to clean it up.

Hitachi-LG GH22NP20 DVD-RW

About the closest I could find to my original GSA-H55N I had on my daily driver during 2007. This one is made in 2010 yet it still has a PATA interface. Also much quieter. Faceplate swapped to white, from a defunct GSA-4167B.

DIY'd Speeze/Spire HSF w/ modified Titan fan

As it says - the base metal is from a "Speeze" (which I remember someone saying it is a subsidiary of Spire) HSF that came with a defunct 754 kit. With the original fan being long gone, I had to reuse one from a Skt 462 Titan cooler - not before replacing the god-awful noisy blades for a matching one off a electrically failed Yate/Loon fan off a dead CWT ISO 450PP PSU.

160GB + 2x250GB HDD

160GB HDD is the boot drive, running Vista Ultimate SP2 x64. The other two are RAID1 drives, used for backup purposes as well as storage purposes. Two of the drives (the 160GB and one of the 250GB) are Caviar SE16s, and the other 250GB drive is a Caviar Blue.

Raidmax RX-700AC 700W PSU

The only PSU I could find to run all this stuff without any hitches. OEM'd by Andyson.

Sound Blaster Audigy SE

Installed so I don't have to deal with the onboard Realtek audio.

Finally, a few pics.
file.php?mode=view&id=161136
file.php?mode=view&id=161137
file.php?mode=view&id=161138

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"Enter at your own peril, past the bolted door..."
Main PC: i5 3470, GB B75M-D3H, 16GB RAM, 2x1TB
98SE : P3 650, Soyo SY-6BA+IV, 384MB RAM, 80GB

Reply 2 of 4, by PcBytes

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Yeah. The only thing that buggers me is Vista being slow despite having 4GB worth of DDR400 - either it's addressing only 3.5GB out of the whole 4, or something fishy is going on.

I could've slapped a 128GB SSD there, but what would the fun in that be?

"Enter at your own peril, past the bolted door..."
Main PC: i5 3470, GB B75M-D3H, 16GB RAM, 2x1TB
98SE : P3 650, Soyo SY-6BA+IV, 384MB RAM, 80GB

Reply 3 of 4, by shevalier

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PcBytes wrote on 2023-04-01, 13:13:

either it's addressing only 3.5GB out of the whole 4

Any desktop Windows x86 addressing only 3.25-3.5Gb.
Above 3.5Gb - x86 Windows server (with PAE), or go to AMD64 (like XP 64 bit)

Aopen MX3S, PIII-S Tualatin 1133, Radeon 9800Pro@XT BIOS, Diamond monster sound MX300
JetWay K8T8AS, Athlon DH-E6 3000+, Radeon HD2600Pro AGP, Audigy 2 Value

Reply 4 of 4, by PcBytes

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I used the 64 bit version of SP2. Specifically went with it because of the 4x1GB sticks , to avoid any other funny stuff from using x86.

file.php?mode=view&id=161299

What I was referring to was something akin to how iGPs share a small amount of the entire RAM - I've had instances (although on 7 and 10, not Vista) where despite the laptop clearly shared a slight amount of RAM for the iGPU, it would still show as full 4GB, instead of "4GB (3.80GB usable)". Thought this might be possible due to using the memory remap feature - without it, I'd get only about 2.8-3GB of RAM at the POST memory count.

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"Enter at your own peril, past the bolted door..."
Main PC: i5 3470, GB B75M-D3H, 16GB RAM, 2x1TB
98SE : P3 650, Soyo SY-6BA+IV, 384MB RAM, 80GB