My ancient rig

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

So I fired up my old rig from years ago, and ran CPUID on it. It has an ATX form factor bellybutton M4N72E mother board, a 750 watt power supply, an AMD Phenom II Socket AM 3 CPU at 3400mhz, 2048MB of PC2 6400 OCZ memory, a GeForce GTX 560 Ti video card, and 4 WD Raptor 10K RPM drives in a RAID array. I honestly have no idea how much value/potential it has. I haven't run a game on it in 7-8 years, but it did fairly well then. It's still running Windows 7 Pro.

[Spikes]

Up the ram and it might make a decent home server.

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

Up the ram and it might make a decent home server.

Ouch. But kinda what I figured.

[Bizman]

Let's just say that despite wanting to expand the life of older hardware to the max, I wouldn't store that kind of a rig for a potential customer. As said, it might work for a home server, for that purpose though you could even get rid of the video card as you could remote control it through your current workhorse. Someone might even pay a few tenners for the card as it still is a decent performer for older games. A Linux distro would be a a safe choice for home server use.

Just as a heads up: You no longer can upgrade Win7 to Win10. Or, you can but it won't activate. They finally did end the option of using Win7 or 8/8.1 licenses for 10 and 11. Bye bye for all the license stickers... There's sort of a potential workaround, though: If you for some reason upgraded to 10 back in 2015 and reverted back to 7, your motherboard has been electronically licensed to 10.

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

Not really surprised. I appreciate the honesty. I'll just have to wait a while.

[Meatwad]

I just recently put together a 233 mhz pentium computer running Windows 98 SE just specifically for running dos based and early windows games. Lots of fun.

Also picked up a Supermicro brand 1u server for $5 today also. Dont know what to do with it but for $5 I cant pass it up

[Shuffler]

LOL looks like I may have to break out my Compaq suitcase from 1985. I'm getting all nostalgic.

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

I think that I've made a deal on a CPU for cheap.

I haven't been able to find any PC2 DDR2 8500 1066 memory. I see a bunch in DDR3, but none bigger than 2GB in DDR2. I'd like to find at least a couple of 4GB sticks, 8MB would be better. If not, I'll have to go to PC2 DDR2 6400, I can find a bunch of it cheap, I found enough to put 16GB in dirt cheap.

Glad I've been able to stir some nostalgia.

If business picks up, and this stupid cancer leaves me alone, maybe there'll be a new rig in my future. This was a decent rig, with surprising performance, in 2010. In 2024, not so much.

[Bizman]

For DDR2 the 2 GB sticks were most commonly used. According to the manual your motherboard would support 4GB sticks, 8GB wasn't even mentioned.

[Spikes]

I think that I've made a deal on a CPU for cheap.

I haven't been able to find any PC2 DDR2 8500 1066 memory. I see a bunch in DDR3, but none bigger than 2GB in DDR2. I'd like to find at least a couple of 4GB sticks, 8MB would be better. If not, I'll have to go to PC2 DDR2 6400, I can find a bunch of it cheap, I found enough to put 16GB in dirt cheap.

Glad I've been able to stir some nostalgia.

If business picks up, and this stupid cancer leaves me alone, maybe there'll be a new rig in my future. This was a decent rig, with surprising performance, in 2010. In 2024, not so much.

What do you plan on doing with it? If it's anything but video games, it's probably cheaper to just buy a newer SFF or Micro tower than try to beef up that.

PC part costs tend to run on a reverse bell curve of sorts. Once it reaches a certain age and supply dries up, prices go up.

[Gooss]

Your P38 is rusty, too.

[GasTeddy]

Your P38 is rusty, too.

Special offer in Bulgarian hardware store.

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

Your P38 is rusty, too.

So is the pile-it.

 

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

For DDR2 the 2 GB sticks were most commonly used. According to the manual your motherboard would support 4GB sticks, 8GB wasn't even mentioned.

I found some 4GB. The reason for 8GB was that PC2 8500 is only supported in one slot per channel, and I was trying to get to 16GB, which is supported. I'd need at least 4GB sticks to run 8GB of PC2 8500. I will probably step back to PC2 6400, I think I have found a couple of deals on name brand 4GB sticks, I can run PC2 6400 in 4 slots, so I can get to 16GB of PC2 6400.

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

What do you plan on doing with it? If it's anything but video games, it's probably cheaper to just buy a newer SFF or Micro tower than try to beef up that.

PC part costs tend to run on a reverse bell curve of sorts. Once it reaches a certain age and supply dries up, prices go up.

We'll see what time permits. I'll try AH, probably WoT, and maybe ATS. Just a few things to pass the time every so often, relax and revisit old times.

Assuming the cancer doesn't get me, I've got 3-5 years before I retire from my "day job." Unless they have a "buyout" that is lucrative, and my wife gets a direct job instead of being contract. We have to have insurance, as long as I'm alive, even being in remission is expensive.

But if all goes decent, I'll probably get caught up and build something new in a year, maybe less. In the mean time, I can score the memory and CPU for less than $125. Maybe under $100. That I can find in the budget. If it runs some games, great. If it doesn't, I save pennies for a while.

I believe I'm going to be okay, I'm healing, my surgeon was happy. I'm waiting on DNA test results, they can find this cancer that way. That's a win. If the last surgery got it all, there's a good chance I'll be fine for a normal life span for my family. That's a huge win.