General computer talk/advice

Good idea. I was planning to add cooling and overclocking sections.

 

I already got one.
(ignore the socket 478 heatsink I placed for size comparison.)

Pentium D @4.2 GHz, Asus P4P8X motherboard, R9250, 2TB of storage.

 

Overclocking. Right.
It can be pretty darn long for somebody to find the highest possible overclock. Is there a way to do it without the BIOS, something like MSI Afterburner for CPUs?

Then make an artwork on your wall out of ol' non-rusty CPUs. I'm sure there's somebody dispatching a pack of ten or twenty for cheap somewhere.

 

I'll try. (Pentium D's @ 3.4 GHz)

(Pile of hard drives in background, I got more recently.)

 

Basic answer: no.

 

How many old CPUs do you even have?

Yeah, wouldn't make much sense anyway. Still, it would be quite a lot more practical.

 

6x Pentium D @ 3.4 GHz
3xPentium 4 @ 2.0 GHz (one is dead, bent pins)
2x Pentium D @ 2.8 GHz
1x i7 2700K
1x i5 3340S @ 1.8 GHz
1x FX 8320 Black

I have 14 sticks of 512mb DDR2 RAM.

1x 40 GB hard drive
12 x 80GB hard drives.
2 x 250 GB hard drives
2x 500 GB hard drives
1x 3000GB hard drive (internally fine, but connectors attacked by screwdriver)
2 x 1 TB hard drives
1x 2 TB hard drive
I have more, but don't know size.

I have old GPUs too, but don't know exactly which ones. I know I have an S3 Savage 4 and nVidia TNT Riva 2.
GTX 460
GTX 650 (almost dead)
R7 370
R9 380

I have OS disks too! Windows 98, NT server 4 SP6a, Windows 7, and many old Linux disks!
http://imgur.com/a/efE0i

 

I think there are software utilities for select hardware, but I'm pretty sure it's all very old. And uses methods that very very dirty. So, complicated answer: probably not, and would not recommend.

 

I have a bunch of old CPUs too. As far as I can remember:
Pentium II 400MHz (Slot)
2x AMD K6-2/500 (Socket 7)
Pentium 4 2.0 (Socket 478)
Pentium 4 2.4 (Socket 478)
AMD Sempron 2400 (Socket A)
AMD Sempron 2600 (Socket A)
AMD Sempron 2800+ (Socket 754)
AMD Athlon 3200 (Socket 754)
AMD Athlon something (Socket AM2)
AMD Sempron something (Socket AM2)
Pentium D 945 (LGA 775)
Core 2 Quad Q6600 (LGA 775)
Core 2 Quad Q9550 (LGA 775)

And some other old PC parts (mostly motherboards, some AGP GPUs and CPU coolers).

 

That'd make up a nice artwork.

Yeah, probably right.

Even more nice artwork.
And really, deleting all those carriage returns makes it a lot easier for me, just if you ask yourself why I'm doing that.

 

I'm sure you can bend the pins back.

 

Oh, also have a ton of DDR RAM (at least 15 sticks) and a bunch of DDR2 (3 1GB sticks, 1 probably dead). Don't have any spare DDR3 though (or any other modern parts, really).

 

@BlueScreen or anyone else who knows a thing or two about power supplies (not just parroting Nvidia's website)

What do you think about a GTX 970 (stock clock) + i5 4690 (stock clock) + 2 HDD, nothing else significant to draw power, all running on a 450W 80+ Bronze? I've already bought the parts, and I know it will work, but should it be something I upgrade in the immediate future, or is it pretty well fine for a long while? I figure I'll be using a hundred watts less than capacity, but is that enough headroom? I won't be upgrading.

 

650 to be safe and a little more efficient. You'll get a hundred answers tho you could scrape by but I like a little headroom. My phenom 2 6 core at 4.1 ghz and 290x at stock everything I'm pulling 380 to 400 from the wall under load on a 850 watt psu. Again you could be fine but it's cheap insurance to have a good supply even tho that 970 will use a solid 140 to 160 watts less than my 290x

 

Uhm no. I've ran that setup on 500 W bronze for a year and a half overclocked + overvolted with room to spare, you're totally overdoing it. Plus it's no more efficient unless it's a higher 80+ rating, in fact 650 would be less efficient as it'd be at a lower load level at most times and thus lower on efficiency curve.

I appreciate your opinion though

 

You dont want to use all of the rated output of a psu. They are more efficient at something like 80 percent load but someone here is probably more willing and able to explain why I choose more capacity for a given power draw.
EDIT: i also picked up the supply back when i was running 2 5870s in crossfire even tho they only used 180 watts each. the 5870 was such a rad card in its day. RIP ati

 

Depends on brand. It will work, sure. 4690+GTX 970 won't use more than 350W. Whether it's a good idea or not depends on how good the PSU's build quality is.

 

That's what I was thinking, thanks. it's a Silverstone SFX power supply, they're not EVGA but then again they're not prebuilt junk.

 

Silverstone is pretty decent, you don't need a new PSU.

 

Just a random HD6870 chilling in my drawer. I have way to much computer crap.



Oh and old HDD's/ heatsink's make great loudspeaker stands..