First post, by m1919
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Hey all. This is my current main project "Xeon Prime", which actually spawned as an offshoot of a dual P3 build I had started a few months ago.
I came across an Intel MS440GX on ebay a while back, bundled with the processor brackets and a P2 450/1Mb Xeon and a terminator card. Naturally I wanted faster, so I purchased a pair of 700/1mb P3 Xeons on the assumption that the board would run them; there are other 440GX based boards that can handle up to 900Mhz Xeons without issue. I later found the board can only run up to 550Mhz Xeons. I flashed the latest Intel bios over the Gateway bios, but I was unable to get my 700s running properly.
I posted about this issue on the bios-mods forum, but they were unable to help, as the Intel bios is apparently impossible to open; it's a Phoenix bios but apparently this is a problem with Intel in general. This was an OEM board for Gateway and IBM, so I'm assuming there was some form of deal made with Intel to stop updates on this board past a certain point.
I did manage to get my hands on an Asus XG-DLS board that should be able to run my 700s and later 900s in the future, but it did not come with mounting brackets, so until I'm able to find some or fabricate my own, it'll be out of action. 😒
When I do get the Asus board running, I'm tempted to see if I can flash another company's bios onto this board and see if it'll actually run. I'm thinking Supermicro's S2DG* series bios would be most likely to work with this as they're 440GX based and appear to be fairly similar, save for the onboard SCSI controllers.
This was all mounted in an Antec NSK-4482B case originally, but the airflow was shit and when I finally stumbled on this aluminum Chenming server tower, I had to jump on it. It even came pre-drilled for mounting P3 Xeons. The odd thing about this is that the case was manufactured in 2004, well after the reign of the P3 Xeon ended.
Current specs are in my sig, but probably soon to change.
Forgive the mediocre photography, took these with my phone as I don't have a decent camera at the moment.
Crimson Tide - EVGA 1000P2; ASUS Z10PE-D8 WS; 2x E5-2697 v3 14C 3.8 GHz on all cores (All core hack); 64GB Samsung DDR4-2133 ECC
EVGA 1080 Ti FTW3; EVGA 750 Ti SC; Sound Blaster Z