tazwegion
Learning Storage Performance
Legacy Project: How to make a silk purse from a sow's ear?
Here is the latest example of legacy rebuilds that come my way, obviously budget is always the paramount concern it would seem so reusing as much as possible of the original equipment is a given including the oddly configured case (see below) the dust build up is nasty buy not the worst I've seen, the build is about 5~6 years old.
My major reservations with this case are primarily the PSU mounting location which is directly adjacent to the CPU heatsink, but the fully removable motherboard tray & HDD cage do give it some redeeming quality, the CPU retention clip was noted to not be locked down when I was disassembling and when the CPU was removed I also found what appeared to be thermal compound residue (a thermal pad had been applied) on it's underside between the (slightly bent) pins.
Now the PSU has gone south (confirmed) but it took the mainboard with it, thus leaving me with a surplus of early generation components and nothing to mount them on OR power them with, ideally I'd recommend upgrading to some preloved AM2 components (or better) but this approach would completely obliterate the budgetary requirements of the rebuild which is intended as a kids PC with only "light gaming" in mind.
Salvaged components for rebuild:
- A64 3000+
- Generic 754/939/940 heatsink
- Vanilla ATI 9000 series AGP v/card
- 2 x Seagate 80Gb IDE
- DVD/RW IDE
- 512Mb Elixir DDR400
My only "other" option is a Pentium4 1.7Ghz mainboard (2 ram slot) combo I've got floating around but it requires SDram of which I have a surplus of 128Mb sticks but insufficient stock to achieve 512Mb (or better), then there's that case I've got to refresh & acceptable PSU to source
On the upside I now have a surplus of CPU fan retention brackets to suit 754/939/940 & passive chipset heatsinks