I'd use the lighter ones, they'd allow more air to flow 'west' and 'east', better cooling the detachable VRM 'west' from the 'southern' CPU, and the caps around both CPUs.

The taller ones would obstruct air flow in said directions.

With a decent 80mm fan on top, any of these heatsinks will be plenty enough to cool each 47W TDP PPro 200 1Ms.

However with both PPros in full swing that will be ~100W total from the CPUs, about the same as a single P4 Preshott HT 3.0~3.2 . Personally I'd like better case ventilation than what can be inferred from pics of your case (single 80mm front intake? + PSU's 80mm extractor?).

If you don't mind modding the case it looks like you may have room above the back panel to place a few 40~60mm fans. Also stripping the paint of the bottom of those heatsinks will help, although not much. But seeing the placement of the psu, it could be used as an exhaust fan as well.
Anyway, this build it looking cool.

tayyare wrote:

JohnnySL25A wrote:

...So it's a question of surface area versus height and weight. With either set I'm intending to attach 80mm fans somehow. So, I'm currently leaning towards using the Compaq heatsinks, would you guys agree with this, or go for those lighter heatsinks that have the larger "footprint" ?

You need to be looking not only for bigger foot print, but also total surface area exposed to air flow. Just by looking at them, I can see that the Compaq ones (bigger, heavier, etc.) has more total surface area then the other ones. This might be a better choice.

oerk wrote:

I'd go with the Compaq heatsinks as well, and a quiet 80mm fan for each.

luckybob wrote:

Those heatsinks are designed for server racks with large 120mm fans blowing air through the whole system. In fact the taller heatsinks are from compaq. Anyway, as long as you have good airflow you will be okay. But just for safety sake, a small quiet fan will do fine.

Thanks guys, some good advice there, I've been keen to give the Compaq ones a try. However...

TELVM wrote:

I'd use the lighter ones, they'd allow more air to flow 'west' and 'east', better cooling the detachable VRM 'west' from the 'so […]
Show full quote

I'd use the lighter ones, they'd allow more air to flow 'west' and 'east', better cooling the detachable VRM 'west' from the 'southern' CPU, and the caps around both CPUs.

The taller ones would obstruct air flow in said directions.

With a decent 80mm fan on top, any of these heatsinks will be plenty enough to cool each 47W TDP PPro 200 1Ms.

I agree with you about the Compaq heatsinks adversely affecting the flow of air. i.e. making the air flow "north" and "south", (and not straight out of the back of the case where we want it, as shown by your blue arrows). This has made me consider additional fans, to extract more air from the case. I don't really want to start hacking vent holes in this old case, so there are only two options for me really :-

1) I could fit an air extractor like the one pictured below. I'm not really keen on this type of extractor, I've always found them to be noisy, they block-up easily, and they seem to have a very short life-span 😠

or

2) I could mount a 60mm fan in the space where the unused PCI slots would be, (see picture below). Being a 60mm fan, this option would also be relatively noisy, however I do have a Coolermaster ball-race 60mm fan which isn't too bad for noise, and the bearing life on these is normally pretty good. If I was using the Compaq heatsinks, this would perhaps grab some of the hot air that was heading north, and expel it straight out of the back ?

TELVM wrote:

However with both PPros in full swing that will be ~100W total from the CPUs, about the same as a single P4 Preshott HT 3.0~3.2 . Personally I'd like better case ventilation than what can be inferred from pics of your case (single 80mm front intake? + PSU's 80mm extractor?)

Yes, P4 Prescotts were notoriously hot, and I wouldn't ever consider running a CPU like a Prescott in a case as poorly designed as this! Infact I could choose just about any random new case online and it would probably have far better cooling potential than this one.... and I'm including mini-ITX ! But yes, the fact is, I have to try and shift as much heat as a single P4 Prescott would generate.

The fact that the side-panels and top panel of this one are double-skinned - with thick plastic outer cladding, and then a metal skin riveted to that from inside, will only add to its' "toasty" nature.

However, I don't really want to purchase another case for this build, ...I like the "vintage" nature of this one, and its' history. But the fact that I've got to dissipate the heat generated from almost 100w of CPUs, plus two 7200rpm drives, plus a 3D card, makes this something of a challenge. 😲 All I have is one 80mm intake fan stuck behind a metal grill (and also it's stuck behind a secondary plastic bezel grill aswell, ...just to make the route for the incoming air extra tortuous!!) And then there's my selection of fairly crappy P-Pro heatsinks... (sadly no copper contruction, or heat-pipes in those days, that would be too easy).

...Plus the fact that case is actually quite small, and the PSU sits right over the CPU's, ...which isn't going to help.

Maybe this case belonged in the dumpster after all... But anyway, I'm currently working on restoring the case. I've decided to spray the metal chassis with siver metallic, (the original finish is pretty grim, badly scratched in places and very scruffy). When I'm finished with it I'm hoping it'll look like new, plus I'm going to drill a couple of subtle holes in it here and there to attach fan mounting brackets I have in mind. More to follow....

It should be OK, just expect 50°C on the CPU with long periods of heavy load...

Perhaps a 5.25" bay fan will help, you may have to buy it as part of a "hard drive cooling kit" though I have seen them as stand-alone parts; http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/EVERCOOL-5-25-TO-3- … =item415e98af5e

This worked for me in an even worse case (late 90s Time case) running an Athlon 64 3800+ X2 with a GeForce 4 MX420, which surely put out more heat.

How about replacing the PCI brackets with the grill style ones or none at all, and setting up a standard fan to extract the hot air.
The good point for that case is its big so there is a lot of air in it, Its just a matter of getting the hot air out mainly

HighTreason wrote:

It should be OK, just expect 50°C on the CPU with long periods of heavy load...

Perhaps a 5.25" bay fan will help, you may have to buy it as part of a "hard drive cooling kit" though I have seen them as stand-alone parts; http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/EVERCOOL-5-25-TO-3- … =item415e98af5e

This worked for me in an even worse case (late 90s Time case) running an Athlon 64 3800+ X2 with a GeForce 4 MX420, which surely put out more heat.

Thanks for that HighTreason,the Evercool fan cooler could be a good option for me. However I'm going to try to run the machine initially on the least amount of fans I can get away with, in order to try and keep noise to a minimum. Also, I've just bought some Scythe HDD cooling fans, to try and keep my Maxtor MaxLine III's cool. So that's going to be 7 fans in total already! If I'm struggling with heat though, I'll have to add some more, and will likely go with something like the Evercool.

chinny22 wrote:

How about replacing the PCI brackets with the grill style ones or none at all, and setting up a standard fan to extract the hot air.
The good point for that case is its big so there is a lot of air in it, Its just a matter of getting the hot air out mainly

You know what, I've just got some of those grill style PCI blanking plates. 😀 I'm going to replace the standard plates with the grill ones, and also add the 60mm extractor as in the diagram in the picture a few posts up.

The case looks pretty big in the photos, but it's actually really small and quite compact. It stands only 14" high. The ATX board squeezes in OK, but the PSU sits directly over the motherboard's CPU area, like an old AT case. It's going to be a struggle to keep this cool I reckon.

I've decided to replace the original Astec power-supply after all. The 200W Astec was originally powering a single P-Pro, a single Hard-Drive, and a couple of fans and a CD-ROM and Floppy, and not much else. Given that I've now doubled the CPU count, (and gone up to the 1Mb cache versions) and will now have two 7200rpm hard-drives, at least 7 fans, a 3D card etc, I didn't want to take chances with the PSU. The Astec would probably have coped, but I'd prefer a bit more margin.

I took the Astec apart and cleaned it out at the weekend... (it was very fluffy and full of plastic filings from the factory), so I was also a bit dubious as to whether it had also suffered a bit, back when it was on active duty.

I've therefore now got a CoolerMaster unit made by HiPro, rated at a peak of 380W (with a following wind). This has the -5V too, as like the Astec it's to the old ATX spec. I'm going to take it apart, clean it out, and replace the built-in 80mm fan with another Coolermaster fan, (still 80mm but brand-new).

The spec of this one is just a little bit better than the Astec, the extra margin is for peace of mind really....

Found pics of the guts from a Cooler Master RS-380-PMSR (which is like your PMSP but without the passive PFC coil) ...

... in this vietnamese forum.

Looks fairly decent for its time, and as far as my null vietnamese allows it might have managed 421W without exploding, which sounds solid.

The bulk caps are highly reliable Panasonics (Matsushita) ...

... but the secondary is populated with Teapo caps ...

... not the most reliable caps in the universe, specially after about a decade.

TELVM wrote:

Found pics of the guts from a Cooler Master RS-380-PMSR (which is like your PMSP but without the passive PFC coil) ... […]
Show full quote

Found pics of the guts from a Cooler Master RS-380-PMSR (which is like your PMSP but without the passive PFC coil) ...

... in this vietnamese forum.

Looks fairly decent for its time, and as far as my null vietnamese allows it might have managed 421W without exploding, which sounds solid.

The bulk caps are highly reliable Panasonics (Matsushita) ...

... but the secondary is populated with Teapo caps ...

... not the most reliable caps in the universe, specially after about a decade.

Thanks TELVM. I'm going to take the PSU apart at the weekend and inspect it / clean it, and replace the fan with a new one. I'll also take a good look at the Teapo capacitors, and if any of them look a bit suspect, I'll order and fit some replacements.

I've taken a look at the link... wish I could read Vietnamese!

bjt wrote:

JohnnySL25A wrote:

Having said all that, being over 10 years old I'm sure they'll both give me the Maxtor click-of-death as soon as I try to install anything 😀

In my experience Maxtor's one of the better ones for longevity. Have a DiamondMax Plus 7200rpm drive still rocking in my S7 desktop. It makes a racket, both seeking and from bearing whine... fluid bearings were a godsend for quiet PCs. I think it's dated 98 or 99. In the meantime I've had plenty of Seagates and IBMs fail.

I remember I used two Maxtor D740X drives in RAID on my (then new) Dual Pentium III-S 1.4 Tualatin machine, back in the early 2000's. I seem to recall the D740X was among the first desktop consumer drives with fluid bearings. Those two drives are still going today. We also sold a lot of them at work, and never had any problems with them, a pretty decent drive really.

With this vintage Pentium Pro build, I'm using a pair of MaxLine III's. As has been discussed earlier in the thread, heat could potentially be a bit of a problem with this machine, mainly due to very poor case design. 😲 So in the interests of giving my MaxLine III's half a chance of surviving beyond Christmas, I've decided to obtain some hard-drive cooling, in the form of a pair of Scythe HDD coolers :-

In the interests of keeping the volume down a bit, I ordered the 1000rpm versions of these fans (14 dBA). (Scythe also make a 2000rpm version of this product at 29 dBA). The kit is pretty basic really, just some ultra-slim fans and a fitting kit to strap them on the back of the hard-drives. They'll probably have minimal effect, but you never know.

From this photo, it is apparent just how slim these fans are, (12 mm).

I would've liked the fans to be positioned more over the area of the drive spindle, rather than much of the fan being over the PCB. However the mounting system made that impossible. Nevertheless, this is actually the first time in this build that I have been putting things together, rather than dismantling stuff... This probably means that I am now on the homeward leg 😀

I've still not actually tested either of these drives.... so it's probably a bit foolish for me to have fitted these drive coolers.... as if one or both of the drives are toast I'll only have to remove them again 😢 I just wanted to put something together! I think I'll test the drives this week in a spare machine.

Other news... I'm continuing to restore the case (the metal chassis parts). I've started with the drive cages. (Pics to follow). I've also worked-out how I'm going to attach the two 80mm fans over the CPU heatsinks. Much bracketry is involved! I could have just used cable ties to strap the fans to the P-Pro heatsinks, (but that wouldn't have looked like a "proper job" IMHO). Again, pics to follow.

Overall, things have been progressing more slowly than I would've liked, but I've had to fit this in around my day job (I'm still in IT, though not as much fun as the old days!) Also, waiting for various missing parts to arrive has been a little frustrating. However, I think I'm now past the half-way point 😁

I posted the sellers images of these nice pieces of hardware in the "I bought this crap" -thread 😀
Now when the stuff finally arrived I took some better pictures.

AIR P6NDI from 1996 with two unknown PPro CPUs and an unknown amount of memory.

The heatsinks look nice and the memory modules dosnt look like 16MB modules 😉. The caps are made by Sanyo and all look good.

I did also buy two Pentium Pro 200 512KB CPUs from the same seller.

I hope to find enough time to do a test run later this week. One thing I already like with this board is its size. The manual has a chapter on the new "AT Extended" form factor (ATX) and all the benefits it brings 😀

I have a board that looks pretty much the same as yours OP, except mine has black memory ports instead of white and mine has 4 PCI, is there a trick to flashing the bios to the newest version? Mine has 1008DI0, and the latest one is 9, when I try to flash it I get an error that it can't flash it it gets to 50% and stops, I have the Iflash utility and bios from Intel's website. I noticed in the bios is displays 200MHZ 256K cache and I am using the 1MB version as well. Is it really recognizing the 1MB and just not displaying it? Mine shows Toshiba logo when it's reading the memory.

Skyscraper wrote:

I posted the sellers images of these nice pieces of hardware in the "I bought this crap" -thread :) Now when the stuff finally a […]
Show full quote

I posted the sellers images of these nice pieces of hardware in the "I bought this crap" -thread 😀
Now when the stuff finally arrived I took some better pictures.

AIR P6NDI from 1996 with two unknown PPro CPUs and an unknown amount of memory.

The heatsinks look nice and the memory modules dosnt look like 16MB modules 😉. The caps are made by Sanyo and all look good.

I did also buy two Pentium Pro 200 512KB CPUs from the same seller.

I hope to find enough time to do a test run later this week. One thing I already like with this board is its size. The manual has a chapter on the new "AT Extended" form factor (ATX) and all the benefits it brings 😀

Nice board 😀 I've not seen one of those P6NDI boards before. Wish my board had that many PCI slots... looks like I'm not going to be able to have Voodoo 2 SLI due to the fact my PR440FX has just 3 PCI slots... and I need one of those for primary graphics, and another one for my drive controller card.

That floppy disk is making me nostalgic! I remember well the long-lost days of using "Tippex" Correction Fluid on my floppy disks... well they were expensive back then! 😁 And then remembering not to put the disk in the floppy drive until the fluid had dried 😀

Hope to see some more pics when your machine is built... put a link on this thread if you get time.

JohnnySL25A wrote:

Nice board 😀 I've not seen one of those P6NDI boards before. Wish my board had that many PCI slots... looks like I'm not going to be able to have Voodoo 2 SLI due to the fact my PR440FX has just 3 PCI slots... and I need one of those for primary graphics, and another one for my drive controller card.

That floppy disk is making me nostalgic! I remember well the long-lost days of using "Tippex" Correction Fluid on my floppy disks... well they were expensive back then! 😁 And then remembering not to put the disk in the floppy drive until the fluid had dried 😀

Hope to see some more pics when your machine is built... put a link on this thread if you get time.

pci slots you say? I have one of these bad boys:

Asus made a Pentium/ pro/ P2 one as well:
http://www.motherboard.cz/mb/asus/P65UP8.htm

I'd sell my left nut to get a working P65UP8 board. 🙁

Turboman wrote:

I have a board that looks pretty much the same as yours OP, except mine has black memory ports instead of white and mine has 4 PCI, is there a trick to flashing the bios to the newest version? Mine has 1008DI0, and the latest one is 9, when I try to flash it I get an error that it can't flash it it gets to 50% and stops, I have the Iflash utility and bios from Intel's website. I noticed in the bios is displays 200MHZ 256K cache and I am using the 1MB version as well. Is it really recognizing the 1MB and just not displaying it? Mine shows Toshiba logo when it's reading the memory.

My PR440FX is using BIOS firmware version 1.00.09.DI0

Mine doesn't have a Toshiba logo at power-up. The PR440FX firmware has a 4K user area which could be for option ROMs (for manufacturers to put their own logo or name in). Sound like your board was originally supplied to Toshiba, perhaps for one of their GS servers.

Maybe the original firmware was customised further by Toshiba? That could explain why the vanilla Intel firmware isn't flashing correctly.

Have you tried all the usual stuff, like trying a different floppy disk? (Incase the first disk you've used is slightly goosed)

JohnnySL25A wrote:

My PR440FX is using BIOS firmware version 1.00.09.DI0 […]
Show full quote

Turboman wrote:

I have a board that looks pretty much the same as yours OP, except mine has black memory ports instead of white and mine has 4 PCI, is there a trick to flashing the bios to the newest version? Mine has 1008DI0, and the latest one is 9, when I try to flash it I get an error that it can't flash it it gets to 50% and stops, I have the Iflash utility and bios from Intel's website. I noticed in the bios is displays 200MHZ 256K cache and I am using the 1MB version as well. Is it really recognizing the 1MB and just not displaying it? Mine shows Toshiba logo when it's reading the memory.

My PR440FX is using BIOS firmware version 1.00.09.DI0

Mine doesn't have a Toshiba logo at power-up. The PR440FX firmware has a 4K user area which could be for option ROMs (for manufacturers to put their own logo or name in). Sound like your board was originally supplied to Toshiba, perhaps for one of their GS servers.

Maybe the original firmware was customised further by Toshiba? That could explain why the vanilla Intel firmware isn't flashing correctly.

Have you tried all the usual stuff, like trying a different floppy disk? (Incase the first disk you've used is slightly goosed)

Good points, it might have been customized although other then the logo everything else seems to be identical. I did try another floppy plus a CD, I also tried booting from a 98se startup disk and a Dos disk. Do these board normally have 3 or 4 PCI slots? other then the bios not updating is it really seeing the 1MB cache CPUs and just not displaying it correctly in the bios you think?

Turboman wrote:

JohnnySL25A wrote:

My PR440FX is using BIOS firmware version 1.00.09.DI0 […]
Show full quote

Turboman wrote:

I have a board that looks pretty much the same as yours OP, except mine has black memory ports instead of white and mine has 4 PCI, is there a trick to flashing the bios to the newest version? Mine has 1008DI0, and the latest one is 9, when I try to flash it I get an error that it can't flash it it gets to 50% and stops, I have the Iflash utility and bios from Intel's website. I noticed in the bios is displays 200MHZ 256K cache and I am using the 1MB version as well. Is it really recognizing the 1MB and just not displaying it? Mine shows Toshiba logo when it's reading the memory.

My PR440FX is using BIOS firmware version 1.00.09.DI0

Mine doesn't have a Toshiba logo at power-up. The PR440FX firmware has a 4K user area which could be for option ROMs (for manufacturers to put their own logo or name in). Sound like your board was originally supplied to Toshiba, perhaps for one of their GS servers.

Maybe the original firmware was customised further by Toshiba? That could explain why the vanilla Intel firmware isn't flashing correctly.

Have you tried all the usual stuff, like trying a different floppy disk? (Incase the first disk you've used is slightly goosed)

Good points, it might have been customized although other then the logo everything else seems to be identical. I did try another floppy plus a CD, I also tried booting from a 98se startup disk and a Dos disk. Do these board normally have 3 or 4 PCI slots? other then the bios not updating is it really seeing the 1MB cache CPUs and just not displaying it correctly in the bios you think?

The PR440FX could have either three or four PCI slots, depending upon what the OEM required. On mine, it's clear where the fourth PCI slot would've been, it's marked-out but not fitted. It would've been a shared back-plate with the single ISA slot. It's a pity the extra PCI wasn't fitted, as I could really have used four. Although then I wouldn't have been able to fit my old ISA SoundBlaster... the board needs to be bigger.... more slots!

Regarding your BIOS flash, have you tried setting the BIOS flash jumper on the board, (to flash recover mode) ? This is J12B1-B, flash recover mode is the "up" position on this jumper. I've not tried it, but it may allow you a way to flash the BIOS by loading a BIOS image straight from floppy when in the recover mode? Be careful you don't kill the board though! 😢

I reckon your P-Pro 1Mb cache chips will be fully utilising the big cache, even if the board doesn't report it in the BIOS. I can't see a way how a motherboard could ignore 768k of cache in each CPU.... But a good way to check is to use a diagnostic program in Windows such as CPU-Z.

It is entirely possible for 1mb ppro chips to not work. I own two Asus P65UP5 boards. The boards are different revisions. The exact number escapes me at the moment, but the earlier revision does not even post with 1mb chips. It will with 256k and overdrives, i dont have any 512's, but im sure they would work. Both boards have the same bios too.

I've removed everything tonight from the metal part of the case, (i.e. the chassis), in order to get the chassis painted. The thing looks really grim in places, I've tried using chemicals to clean it up, but given that there's even rust on certain parts of the chassis, I've decided that painting will give me the "as new" finish I'm looking for.

I mentioned on page 1 that this case is all back-to-front and upside-down, a really weird design. Well the weirdness continues... just noticed tonight when dismantling stuff that the hard-drive activity light is yellow... What was wrong with a good old-fashioned red LED? Had they run out of red LEDs that day, so decided to raid the yellow LED drawer?

Here's a photo of the chassis when everything had been removed. It's quite grubby. I tried cleaning it with solvents but when the solvent had dried, nothing had changed. 😕

So I've bought a couple of these, just a straight-forward metallic-effect silver.... I've already painted the drive cages, and they've come up like new. I haven't got any photos yet, but I'll post some when everything's done.

When all is complete and back together, the chassis above is clad with beige, thick plasticky panels that clip onto the metal chassis, (the case doesn't use any of the the usual painted metal panels). The plastic panels are in OK condition and will only require a quick clean with some sort of foam cleaner.

Did quite a bit more work rebuilding and re-assembling the Dual Pentium Pro machine at the weekend. First up, the 2nd-hand Coolermaster PSU I bought recently, I decided to take it apart and inspect its' condition - check the capacitors etc. and give it a good clean. Whilst the casing was open, I also took the opportunity to replace the cooling fan. Unusually, the original fan wasn't even a Coolermaster fan 😕 ....they'd used an ADDA AD0812HS. So I decided to fit a new 80mm Coolermaster.

The capacitors all looked in excellent condition. The inside of the PSU was very clean... looked hardly used infact. The tamper-proof seal was still intact too (well it was 'til I started tearing it apart!) Once it was all back together, I decided to test the PSU with my Core 2 Quad Q9550 machine - it worked fine powering that PC, so I expect it'll have no problem with the Pentium Pro 😎

I also finished painting the rusty, scuffed metal chassis. A bit pointless really, as most of this will be concealed once I fit the outer plastic panels to it. However, I really want to go for an "as-new" look wherever I can. Here's some shots of it outside when it was drying....

I also painted the drive cages and some other small pieces to match....

Back inside now, almost ready to start fitting some stuff....

I had masked the original labels on the case, and also the various date stamps. I wanted to preserve them....

Two of the small, square, rubber feet on the case were missing, at opposite corners too, so the case rocked quite a bit 😲 So I bought some new self-adhesive rubber feet from Startech. Interesting that on the bag it states the rubber feet have a "Lifetime Warranty"!! ...So if one of these suckers falls off twenty years down the line, I'll be straight on the phone to Startech, on a hot-line to the tech-support!..... 🤣

Next up, I'm going to be re-fitting the front intake fan and plastic shroud, the wiring for the power-switch, front LEDs etc, fitting the replacement internal speaker I found, and then re-fitting the drive cages, the HDDs, a DVD-ROM and a floppy-drive.... More to follow....