@athlon-power I had recapped an Original Xbox 1.6b motherboard that had 5 caps that were swollen and it turned out fine, also recapped an ATI Radeon 9600XT card with new caps as well. I have a better soldering iron with temperature controls (knob), so it shouldn't be so painful.

chinny22 wrote on 2019-12-31, 10:10:

The Gateway Tabor (and other Gateway motherboards round that era) are actually made by Intel which is why they are such high quality 😀

I've always thought that my Tabor III looked freakishly similar to my old SE440BX-2, I guess that's why. An odd thing to note is that there are some 440BX motherboards that have heatsinks over the north bridge, and some that don't, I wonder why that is?

The Tabor III line of boards does not have a heatsink over the north bridge, whereas the SE440BX-2 and EPoX (at least with my model) motherboards did indeed have a heatsink over the chipset.

Hell, the heatsink over the north bridge on my EPoX board didn't even have thermal paste joining the two, though I added some MX-4 because it can't hurt anything, and it should improve cooling performance a little. Do any of these motherboards really need a heatsink over the chipset at all? If so, why do some 440BX motherboards have them, and some don't?

I have an Asus P2B (full ATX size), a P2B-M (baby AT size), and a very very similar baby AT 440BX board made by "Totem". All three have the same thin green heatsink on the northbridge chip. I suspect it's marginal - probably not technically needed but helpful in a hot-running system. (OC, bad case ventilation, etc.) That sink can't be doing a heck of a lot based on its size, but it still doesn't get particularly hot. Just warm.

IMO, this is when computers started to get stable. The PII (well, 440BX) in particular is also a fantastic bridge between DOS, Win9x, and almost up to 2K/XP. That's probably why they're more sought-after.

IMO, if I found a motherboard I wanted online for $40, I would be thrilled. It seems ~$60 is typical, and it's not a deal-breaker when something I really want starts to get up to $100 or so. Minor repairs (recap) to be expected, but I'll leave the ones with a ton of bent pins and ceramic caps having been scraped / knocked off to someone who is more interested in haggling, and doesn't mind spending more time on resuscitation. I've got one with a couple crushed pins in one of the four RAM sockets. If I had known that, I wouldn't have bought it - despite that I really only need two. (For now.)