Update on the graphics card.

I was monitoring temps on FurMark, just checking everything was OK. The card was idling at 52-54c, I clicked on the burn in test and the temps soared up to 80, 85, 90, 95... at which point I pulled the power and had a further look...

This is what I was greeted with...

Most of the paste on the memory chips was dried out paste. I cleaned the GPU and each memory chip with some Akasa TIM Cleaner. I then reapplied Artic Silver 5 to the GPU and all memory chips.

I connected it all back up now idles at 41c and tops out at 68-70c max 😀

It actually makes a great Win98 rig 😀
You'll be able to max out pre-2002 Win9x games with it -- FX series actually has great compatibility with older DX5,6,7 and OpenGL games, as has probably been mentioned a million times on this forum, so good choice on that 5950 Ultra.

Funny you should mention your 4600i for a 'retro gaming' rig... hehe, my *MAIN* rig is (mostly) a Dell Dimension 4600 🤣! 😀

The "mostly" part: Added RAM for a total of 2GB, added an ATI 9600 Pro AGP video card, and a Sound Blaster Live Value Edition. Still has the same Seagate Barracuda 80GB hard drive, original 3-1/2" floppy drive, albeit a replacement CD-ROM drive 😀

One word of note on these systems. Make sure you set the "Hard Drive Acoustic Mode" in the BIOS to "Performance", otherwise it slows down disk I/O by quite a bit.

Oh, and congratulations on owning PC World's #10 worst PC of all time
http://www.pcworld.com/article/129857/article.html?page=2

I remember back in 2004 when the power supplies on these started dropping like flies. We had 4 of them on the bench in one week at the computer shop I worked at. The power supplies were the usual failure, but some took out the motherboard too.

Very neat rig; I always liked the look of that style Asus cooler (shame to hear it's noisy). Temperatures don't look bad at all with AS5! On the NV4, I'd double-check on the compatibility - the 5800 and 5950 don't have the same board layout and afaik their OEM heatsinks aren't interchangable as a result. I know the Zalman VF700 did a very good job with my 6800GT (and that it's a pretty universal heatsink), so I'd assume it should work with 5950 too, as long as you have ramsinks in addition to it.

Neat, I have that same exact model (mostly). Except I went all out and upgraded it to the best I could get. 4GB of DDR3200, a Velociraptor HDD, Soundblaster XFi, P4 Extreme, and an HD4670. Replaced the PSU too. I wanted to put on a different CPU cooler, but never could figure out how.

I used that as my main machine until I gave into the XP doomsday and switched to a laptop with win7 about half a year ago.

Always nice to see old unloved office workhorses getting a new lease of life, well done.
As mentioned It makes a nice Duel boot 98/XP machine (You'll have to disable HT for 9x) for those days you want to go even older or drop back to pure dos which you can do with an Audigy.

NJRoadfan wrote:

Oh, and congratulations on owning PC World's #10 worst PC of all time
http://www.pcworld.com/article/129857/article.html?page=2

I remember back in 2004 when the power supplies on these started dropping like flies. We had 4 of them on the bench in one week at the computer shop I worked at. The power supplies were the usual failure, but some took out the motherboard too.

I'm wondering if something was changed in the latter versions of this model. Mine was manufactured in 2005, and still has the original power supply... no problems at all.

Albeit, last year I worked on one for a customer of mine. Although the power supply in her 4600 had quit, it was due to a lightning strike near her house (a common problem out here in this neck of the woods).

obobskivich wrote:

Very neat rig; I always liked the look of that style Asus cooler (shame to hear it's noisy). Temperatures don't look bad at all with AS5! On the NV4, I'd double-check on the compatibility - the 5800 and 5950 don't have the same board layout and afaik their OEM heatsinks aren't interchangable as a result. I know the Zalman VF700 did a very good job with my 6800GT (and that it's a pretty universal heatsink), so I'd assume it should work with 5950 too, as long as you have ramsinks in addition to it.

I've ordered the NV4, which says it fits the 5800/5950. Trying to find if people had successfully got it to fit on the Asus version was hard, I managed to find a guy who fitted it to his 5800 reference which looked pretty much the same. I thought I'd take a chance. My only worry if there is enough clearance on the rear power molex.

NJRoadfan wrote:

One word of note on these systems. Make sure you set the "Hard Drive Acoustic Mode" in the BIOS to "Performance", otherwise it s […]
Show full quote

One word of note on these systems. Make sure you set the "Hard Drive Acoustic Mode" in the BIOS to "Performance", otherwise it slows down disk I/O by quite a bit.

Oh, and congratulations on owning PC World's #10 worst PC of all time
http://www.pcworld.com/article/129857/article.html?page=2

I remember back in 2004 when the power supplies on these started dropping like flies. We had 4 of them on the bench in one week at the computer shop I worked at. The power supplies were the usual failure, but some took out the motherboard too.

Mine must of been a later one, as it was still on the original PSU, just caked in dust 😀 I replaced it just in case, considering I was putting in a power hungry Geforce FX 😀

zstandig wrote:

Neat, I have that same exact model (mostly). Except I went all out and upgraded it to the best I could get. 4GB of DDR3200, a Velociraptor HDD, Soundblaster XFi, P4 Extreme, and an HD4670. Replaced the PSU too. I wanted to put on a different CPU cooler, but never could figure out how.

I used that as my main machine until I gave into the XP doomsday and switched to a laptop with win7 about half a year ago.

What model processor did you upgrade to? Yeah, the cooler is a Custom DELL Job, I looked and you can remove it which leaves 4 mounting holes, but unsure if you can mount the standard P4 bracket to it.

NJRoadfan wrote:

One word of note on these systems. Make sure you set the "Hard Drive Acoustic Mode" in the BIOS to "Performance", otherwise it s […]
Show full quote

One word of note on these systems. Make sure you set the "Hard Drive Acoustic Mode" in the BIOS to "Performance", otherwise it slows down disk I/O by quite a bit.

Oh, and congratulations on owning PC World's #10 worst PC of all time
http://www.pcworld.com/article/129857/article.html?page=2

I remember back in 2004 when the power supplies on these started dropping like flies. We had 4 of them on the bench in one week at the computer shop I worked at. The power supplies were the usual failure, but some took out the motherboard too.

I used to have one of these and i have heard of the psu in them failing readily but it doesn't really take much to replace the psu though.

zstandig wrote:

Neat, I have that same exact model (mostly). Except I went all out and upgraded it to the best I could get. 4GB of DDR3200, a Velociraptor HDD, Soundblaster XFi, P4 Extreme, and an HD4670. Replaced the PSU too. I wanted to put on a different CPU cooler, but never could figure out how.

I used that as my main machine until I gave into the XP doomsday and switched to a laptop with win7 about half a year ago.

that sounds like a killer early xp system....p4 extreme editions are hard to come by.

I'm surprised you wanted to replace the cpu cooler...When i had this type of Dell back in the day I found that the cpu ran on the cooler side for a p4...I had a 3.2ghz chip at that time....I find these cpu cooling designs are efficient since it directs heat directly out of the case...and the heat sink and fan were relatively large for the time for an oem system.

I did end up getting rid of this dell because I did not like the case design at all..but that's a personal preference of course...at least by this time dell got smarter and used typical atx psu and other connectors (finally) so one could just upgrade using aftermarket parts.

[quote="foey"]
I've ordered the NV4, which says it fits the 5800/5950. Trying to find if people had successfully got it to fit on the Asus version was hard, I managed to find a guy who fitted it to his 5800 reference which looked pretty much the same. I thought I'd take a chance. My only worry if there is enough clearance on the rear power molex.

Reference 5800 has a different board layout, see:
http://www.ixbt.com/video2/images/gffx-2/asus … -scan-front.jpg
(note the positions of RAM chips and caps)

Arctic's website shows "NV Silencer 4 Rev 2" as supporting 5900-5950; not 5800. I'm wondering if the "Rev 1" isn't the model for the 5800 series; I would guess they're not universally compatible as a result. 😊

I received my NV4 Rev2 today, it fits perfectly...

Looks pretty epic!

Help!, the fan refuses to spin. The only thing I can put it down to was the old heatsink fan was powering two fans. So question is can I cut the plug and connect it into a full size molex @ 12v?

Edit Its the fan, refuses to work. I connected it up to a 12v fan connector and refuses to work. Tested the same connector on another 6600GT with a Artic Cooler (NV6) and works perfectly.

Further Edit Seller is sending me another unit tomorrow. I don't have to send the old one back, I sense some ghetto modding 😀

Seller sent me out another NV4. Tested the fan quickly and its working. I pulled the other apart but could not find any issues. Appears to be dud.

Artic Cooler doing a fantastic job of keeping the 5950 Ultra cooler, I've not seen any temps above 64c after a long session with the case on. The DELL case does not provide much cooling with the only extract being the CPU & PSU fans. Without case side on, the graphics card never gets above 55c.

I just need some more RAM and its complete.

You are aware that the fan only starts to spin if the card is hot enough?

That is the behavior I'm seeing on my NV Silencer 4 rev2.

vetz wrote:

You are aware that the fan only starts to spin if the card is hot enough?

That is the behavior I'm seeing on my NV Silencer 4 rev2.

The Geforce 5950 Ultra I have, when powered on - there is a second delay then the fan spins. With the first NV4 rev2 I had the fan never come on, I even left it running on the desktop and the temps were increasing.

I also tested the fan directly plugged into 12v 3pin > molex adapter, nothing - you can just hear a click. When I got the replacement NV4 rev I tested on the adapter and the fans spins, likewise fitted onto the cards plug. I'm guessing its the card that yours is connected to which controls that as the NV4 rev2 does not have a RPM sensor.

Good to hear you got a working fan - always nice when sellers take care of things. It does look very nice installed on that card, and I'm glad it fits! Can you unplug the molex connector without removing the heatsink?

Temperature performance looks to be improved as well - about on par with the original Flow FX, but probably somewhat quieter.

foey wrote:

What model processor did you upgrade to? Yeah, the cooler is a Custom DELL Job, I looked and you can remove it which leaves 4 mounting holes, but unsure if you can mount the standard P4 bracket to it.

The CPU is a 3.2 P4 Extreme (socked 478), I was a bit wary because of the Pentium 4's reputation for being a space heater. But... the urge to try to upgrade it...I couldn't ignore it. So naturally I did it anyway, any potential negative consequences be damned. I was going to attempt to put in a new heat sink and fan, but I got one of those feelings that "If you remove this part you'll never get it back the way it was" You know that ominous feeling that leaves you staring at the mess for a while before giving up on something risky.

So, yeah apparently 3.2Ghz wasn't all that much hotter than 2.8Ghz, so it worked out okay.

retrofanatic wrote:

that sounds like a killer early xp system....p4 extreme editions are hard to come by.

I'm surprised you wanted to replace the cpu cooler...When i had this type of Dell back in the day I found that the cpu ran on the cooler side for a p4...I had a 3.2ghz chip at that time....I find these cpu cooling designs are efficient since it directs heat directly out of the case...and the heat sink and fan were relatively large for the time for an oem system.

I did end up getting rid of this dell because I did not like the case design at all..but that's a personal preference of course...at least by this time dell got smarter and used typical atx psu and other connectors (finally) so one could just upgrade using aftermarket parts.

Oh, yeah, the cooler is fine and all, nice copper base, really heavy too. Problem was, I was worried about the "shroud" covering, One of the hinges it was attached to, got a crack in the plastic (it was a little flimsy). I feared it wouldn't be stable, naturally the shroud thing was custom by Dell, couldn't replace it. So the next step would have been to replace the heatsink. So to clarify the heatsink was hunky dory, it was the green shroud thing. Eventually I realized couldn't find a guaranteed replacement, due to worry that the design was Dell custom.

Amen on the standard ATX PSU, If I hadn't been able to get one, I wouldn't have had the power to run the HD4670.

The extreme was a nice surprise, I managed to find it for about 60 dollars or so. I'm glad I was able to find it. The L3 cache probably helps out quite a bit.

obobskivich wrote:

Good to hear you got a working fan - always nice when sellers take care of things. It does look very nice installed on that card, and I'm glad it fits! Can you unplug the molex connector without removing the heatsink?

Temperature performance looks to be improved as well - about on par with the original Flow FX, but probably somewhat quieter.

I don't think I have enough room to remove the molex, the fan casing practically sits on top of it.

zstandig wrote:

foey wrote:

What model processor did you upgrade to? Yeah, the cooler is a Custom DELL Job, I looked and you can remove it which leaves 4 mounting holes, but unsure if you can mount the standard P4 bracket to it.

The CPU is a 3.2 P4 Extreme (socked 478), I was a bit wary because of the Pentium 4's reputation for being a space heater. But... the urge to try to upgrade it...I couldn't ignore it. So naturally I did it anyway, any potential negative consequences be damned. I was going to attempt to put in a new heat sink and fan, but I got one of those feelings that "If you remove this part you'll never get it back the way it was" You know that ominous feeling that leaves you staring at the mess for a while before giving up on something risky.

So, yeah apparently 3.2Ghz wasn't all that much hotter than 2.8Ghz, so it worked out okay.

Dammit, you got me looking for extremes now! 🤣

I knew it worked when the Pentium 4 logo in the BIOS changed to an extreme edition logo. I made sure to get the latest BIOS updates before I did the install just in case.