V.T. Eric Layton 6,494 Posted March 17, 2011 Remember all those goodies I got from my buddy the other day? Well, one of the items he gave me was this BiTchIN Cooler Master Nvidia tower (see Fig. 1)Fig 1I got inspired today and decided to put ericsbane03 (current desktop machine) into this killer box. I added some goodies, too. Here's what I ended up with: Cooler Master Chassis Mid Tower Elite 334 Nvidia Edition ATX CasingCooler Master Extreme Power Plus - 650watt power supplyGigaByte GA-M55plus-S3G socket AM2 motherboardAMD Athlon64 3800+Nvidia chipset: GeForce 6100 Northbridge, nForce 430 SouthbridgeEVGA GeForce GTS-450 PCIe video card4Gig Centon DDR2 800 PC-6400 RAM (slots 1 & 2)2Gig Minix DDR2 800 PC-6400 RAM (slots 3 & 4)IDE 0 Master: Western Digital 250GigIDE 0 Slave: ZIP 100SATA 0: Western Digital 250GigSATA 1: Western Digital 250GigIDE 1 Master: HP DVD 840IDE 1 Slave: HP DVD 100iStandard 3.5" floppyEight (8) cooling fans=====HP Deskjet 842C printerHP Scanjet 3400 flatbed scannerHP W1907 LCD monitorAltec Lansing (front) + Harman Kardon (rear) speakersDell keyboardLogitech Trackball mouse *Items in green are original parts from ericsbane03 system.She's old, but just like me, she can still raise some H3LL!A note, though... I'm still having issues with the PCIe circuitry on this mobo (bad connection? broken trace? bad solder joint?), so my GTS-450 is not working. I'm defaulting to the onboard GPU; the difference between 14K+ fps and 2900 fps. Oh well.Tomorrow, I'll be partitioning that replacement SATA drive in preparation for Win XP (games) and 5 slots for Linux testers. Other than the vid card issue, I'm back in business.Off I go... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
kamicota 15 Posted March 17, 2011 Way to go EricMore like a War of the Worlds - TIME MACHINE - meant to travel into the FUTURE ehCheers for yearsColin Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
V.T. Eric Layton 6,494 Posted March 17, 2011 This thing is such a patched together hybrid that only the Frankenstein analogy could possibly work. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
abarbarian 3,272 Posted March 17, 2011 Sounds like a nice pc you have for free there Obviously you have tried a different GFX card to rule out that posibility. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
sunrat 2,214 Posted March 17, 2011 Ooooo, shiny. Hope you get the video card sorted. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ichase 502 Posted March 17, 2011 Well you have to admit. Old or not (and with linux, I have found old works VERY well) it looks GOOD!!!Donations are always a good thing. :)Have much fun with it.All the best,Ian Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
securitybreach 10,859 Posted March 17, 2011 That sounds like a great machine, especially for free Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
V.T. Eric Layton 6,494 Posted March 17, 2011 Sounds like a nice pc you have for free there Obviously you have tried a different GFX card to rule out that posibility. Yup. The issue started out of nowhere with my 8500 card a while back. I've since tried with two other brand new cards... same issue. I can wiggle the card in the socket sometimes and get it to work, but it's not consistent. I've even tried resoldering the socket and cleaning the contacts. That helped for about 24 hours. There's is definitely a bad s-joint, trace, or contact somewhere in that PCIe circuit. Too bad this board doesn't have two PCIe 16 slots like many newer boards. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
wa4chq 371 Posted March 18, 2011 Good luck with your project. Sounds like you scored big time. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
V.T. Eric Layton 6,494 Posted March 19, 2011 Making progress. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
V.T. Eric Layton 6,494 Posted March 21, 2011 The Doctor is working on something new....http://forums.scotsnewsletter.com/index.ph...st&p=320933 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
