VOGONS


Optiplex SX270(N)

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First post, by JTD121

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Another random old-ish PC project I've been tinkering with! Found (again, in a corner of darkness) one of those SFF PCs that were (for some reason) very popular in the early-to-mid-00s, before the P4s were phased out (and this would make (more) sense from a thermal, noise, and performance standpoint, like the current NUCs Intel has been hawking).

This particular model had the following in original (as-found, stock) configuration:

  • Pentium 4, Northwood core, 2.4GHz, 512K L2 cache
  • 512MB DDR-2700 (333MHz) in 2 256MB sticks
  • 40GB 2½" IDE HD that boots, but I can't get to login, doesn't like to show up as an external drive either
  • Was up-to-date BIOS-wise (A06)
  • Last fully supported OS is Windows XP, but I like to go rogue sometimes

It took a lot longer than I expected (even with Mr Scott's generous 20-25% margin added) to get it to a usable state.

First, I had some DDR-3200 here, I am not sure from what other project. But it was Geil RAM, with heatspreaders, which is probably a good idea, considering the cramped quarters inside. It was 2 512MB sticks, and I believe this board maxes out at 2GB anyway. And it clocked down to DDR-2700 speeds, according to the BIOS detection.

Found an IDE laptop drive that was 100GB (but not 7200RPM) that worked. Several other options were 20 or 40GB, but for whatever reason didn't work (I chalked it up to physical damage that I can't fix). Got Windows 7 SP1 (32-bit, of course) installed, but one thing stopped this project from being all it could be.

The video (or lack thereof), is built-in to the board, and is technically not supported past Windows XP. At least when using an Intel driver installation package. But updating the video driver through Device Manager fixed that right up, after I found the most recent 2000/XP driver set and extracted them!

Here is the album of pics I made to go with it! http://imgur.com/a/zsnFH

Reply 1 of 2, by HardwareExtreme

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Nice! However, the NUCs are probably better at heat though, since the Pentium 4s were space heaters. I have a minitower GX280, which is the next model up, with a socket 775 board instead of 478.

Q: Why didn't Intel call the Pentium the 586?
A: Because they added 486 and 100 on the first Pentium and got 585.999983605.

Source: http://www.columbia.edu/~sss31/rainbow/pentium.jokes.html

Reply 2 of 2, by JTD121

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Yeah, I mentioned as much in the OP. But again, sometimes I have time on my hands, and not so much to do. This time I happened to remember I had this small thing sitting in a corner of the server room, and decided to give it a go.

I don't have a lot of older hardware that might interest most here, being business machines and such. But I do try to participate 😀