If you have the space, absolutely! It will only go up in value over time 😀

Well, it's not long before the 10-year rule applies to it, seeing that it's 2006-era hardware. I'm a bit concerned about the condition of the hardware. But I will definitely know for sure after I've taken a look. My grandparents lived in a coastal area for a very long time and they definitely didn't clean the inside. So I'm expecting some rust and about 2 cats worth of dust and fur.

Might not a retro rig but definitely capable of file server if you don't have one.

Opteron 165, my first dual core...

Overclocks always to 2.6Ghz.

if it's the right mobo and cpu you can actually run 8gb or ECC ram!!!

8GB of DDR1 in a socket 939 system

Yeah, I was thinking of doing something like that with it. The ULi M1575 (ULi was formerly known as ALi) South Bridge is very capable and I remember that it was a serious challenge to the nForce 4 chipset at the time as well. The board has 5 internal SATA 3.0G connectors (4x ULi and 1x SIL) connectors. It also has dual gigabit ethernet, unfortunately one of them runs on the PCI bus, so it's not that good or fast for large files).

ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe is a now a rare and sought after motherboard 😀
Many boards now suffer from bad caps, that is one of the top socket 939 boards so its worth recapping if you find any bad caps.
Oh I forgot that it has almost all solid caps so thats likely not an issue, other R480 and R580 boards did not 😒, I have a few dead ones.

Cool, I did not know this stuff! I'm not too keen on looking for rare 2gb ddr400 ecc sticks, but I have an extra 2gb kit I could use to upgrade it to 4gb of RAM. What else can I do with it?

I would also keep this system..

The things that are the most value are:

-Processor
-Motherboard
- Memory (2GB DDR stick are rare now days to find.) Mostly you find common 256MB and 512MB sticks

- Power supply is a great one of the best stable brands (dont recommend to throw that one away)

I would only dump that silly bad quality case..

Robin4 wrote:

I would also keep this system.. […]
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I would also keep this system..

The things that are the most value are:

-Processor
-Motherboard
- Memory (2GB DDR stick are rare now days to find.) Mostly you find common 256MB and 512MB sticks

- Power supply is a great one of the best stable brands (dont recommend to throw that one away)

I would only dump that silly bad quality case..

I still have a 2GB DDR400 RAM somewhere in my house 😀

@PCBytes: Very tempting, but I really have *too many* parts that I need to use for something already. I think I'll just be breaking the camel's back at this stage.

Well, hypothetically speaking, would it be worth all the time and effort to turn it into a period-correct retro rig? If I recall correctly, it came out during the GeForce 7xxx and Radeon Xxxx/X1xx era. It was also not uncommon for people to run GeForce 8800 and Radeon HD 2xxx cards on these machines. A quick browse on eBay shows that some of these cards are surprisingly more expensive than you'd think.

Evert wrote:

Cool, I did not know this stuff! I'm not too keen on looking for rare 2gb ddr400 ecc sticks, but I have an extra 2gb kit I could use to upgrade it to 4gb of RAM. What else can I do with it?

just look in my thread i linked if you haven't already they aren't RARE or at lest tooo RARE, at least not here in the US. i paid like $14 USD for like 7 sticks off the stuff. all i need now is new video card which is on the way and a new psu and an ssd. and as a side note the 2gb sticks need to be that specific model as discussed in the thread i linked and the thread linked in that thread. 🤣 or at least as far as we know.

Well, you have to remember, the postal service in South Africa is completely unreliable. So I'm going to have to use something like Shipito, which will end up pushing the price up by 20%-40% and I'll have to pay another 40% tax and a penalty since I'm not a registered importer and I've imported more than 2 items already.

I recommend using http://www.bidorbuy.co.za and also phoning / emailing computer shops throughout GP. A lot of them will have stuff lying around. Good luck! 😀 Also: a lot of people from the EU and people from ZA go back and forth to the EU (and sometimes US). Perhaps they can help bring stuff over. That is what I used to do when I still lived in GP/WC/FS.

Thanks PeterLI. I frequent BidOrBuy a lot and I've acquired a lot of spares for my Socket 7 build that way. I also frequent local forum classifies. Unfortunately, you need to go beyond borders sometimes.

Alright, some news. I opened the case up and I'm very happy to report that there is not a single piece of visible rust in the case and a lot less dust than I was expecting. The Sony optical drive seems a bit buggered since it opens itself automatically after closing, even without a CD in the tray. The CPU cooler is the very nice AMD stock cooler with the 4-heatpipes and the 80mm Delta fan. It's been 10 years and the fan still runs fine, it just needs to be tidied up a bit. Maybe given a drop of machine oil. The case is also not so bad, I was thinking of another case I had. It's one of those cheap handle cases you got in the early 2000s made by a company called KME. The power supply is also not an Enermax (I was mistaken), it is an Antec HE 550W Modular power supply. Unfortunately 4 of the 6 modular cables are missing, but you can acquire new ones on eBay and through Antec so it's not such a big deal.

Edit: I've attached photos of the case as well as what it looks like on the inside.

That looks like a nice machine! The case is actually not bad even. Little dusting and it looks like you are ready to take it to a LAN party.

The motherboard looks perfect! Clean the exellent stock CPU cooler and the machine will last another decade.

With a better video card and perhaps a slight CPU overclock to ~2.4 GHz this computer would be fast enough for all XP era games.
If you do not want to overclock I would look for an Athlon X2 4800+, FX60 or an Opteron 180/185, they often sell for stupid prices but not always.

Yeah the motherboard is in mint condition. ASUS used Sanyo and Panasonic capacitors on this thing. It's very high quality. Til this day it is still one of the most beautiful looking boards I have ever seen in my life.