HARDWARE Short Questions That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread - Reloaded

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > HARDWARE Short Questions That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread - Reloaded

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Rexxed: May 1, 2010; Dis is amazing!
I gotta try dis!

Chuu posted:

Here is a link to a product that basically lets you connect a banana plug directly to a wall socket for ESD grounding, and a tester to make sure the outlet is safe to use in that way : link.

Is there a cheaper version of this? The plug only sells for $25 and I imagine it's literally just molded plastic over a single metal piece that connects ground to the plug, hugely overpriced. Anyone know exactly what the tester does? Is it literally just testing the voltage between ground and live pins? It also is probably severely overpriced.

Or is this one of those things you just suck up and pay the $50 for if you need it?

If you're buying ESD stuff (Electrostatic Discharge) for assembling a computer you can usually skip it by wearing cotton (t-shirt and jeans) and grounding yourself before you put any ESD sensitive components together (touch the metal on a plugged in computer power supply). If you're doing a lot of ESD work you'll want a wrist strap or a mat. The device you linked to is a kit which seems to be meant for attaching to ESD mats based on its pictures on amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/PGC-015Q-Green-Ground-Cord-Qube/dp/B0060AG7W4/

Amazon also has outlet testers, including the one you linked, for $5-10:
http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&field-keywords=outlet%20tester&index=blended

You could buy an ESD strap with a clip and attach it to something grounded:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_pg_2?rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Aesd+strap&page=2&keywords=esd+strap&ie=UTF8&qid=1457825865&spIA=B017164JG6,B014CB9TVS

Or you could just buy a mat:
http://www.amazon.com/iFixit-Portable-Anti-Static-Mat/dp/B00U6PDNPI/

To sum up the situation, the kit you linked isn't overpriced but you may not need it. If you do need it there are cheaper alternatives.

# ? Mar 13, 2016 00:40

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# ? May 16, 2024 23:23

Hi Jinx: Feb 12, 2016

Could anyone recommend a 4U chassis with ~20" (or less) depth that supports E-ATX (12"x13") motherboards and works with standard PSUs, fans, etc? Not concerned about number of drive bays, etc. I guess a 3U chassis might be fine too, if there's nothing in 4U size out there.

I have an old Intel 5520SC-based system with tons of RAM and two (back then) high-end 5600 Xeons, and I'm trying to put it to use as a VM host in a new case.

The Supermicro SC842 would look good, but it ships with its own proprietary fans and PSU, both of which are awful loud so this is a nonstarter unfortunately.

Google's been failing me miserably. There are quite a few 20" cases out there but most of them stop at ATX motherboard sizes.

Something like this could be a good fit but their only reseller is in the UK, the product is out of stock, and they don't ship to the US anyway.

http://www.logic-case.com/products/rackmount-chassis/4u/4u-short-depth-chassis-aluminium-lockable-door-4-x-35-+-1-x-525-sc-43902/

# ? Mar 13, 2016 02:34

Rukus: Mar 13, 2007; Hmph.

Hi Jinx posted:

Something like this could be a good fit but their only reseller is in the UK, the product is out of stock, and they don't ship to the US anyway.

http://www.logic-case.com/products/rackmount-chassis/4u/4u-short-depth-chassis-aluminium-lockable-door-4-x-35-+-1-x-525-sc-43902/

I ordered from them last year, and they do ship to North America, but you have to contact them in advance to set up the order. It cost close to $100 CAD for the shipping, then another $25 for brokerage from UPS in my case.

I believe you can find some of their cases on Alibaba, but then you run into the trouble of minimum quantity and dealing with resellers who may not speak the best English.

# ? Mar 13, 2016 02:52

betterinsodapop: Apr 4, 2004; 64:3

I had previously posted about what I believed was a faulty PSU. After replacing it, however, I continue to have the same issue: seemingly random freezing.
I checked both of my hard drives for errors, tested my RAM, replaced my PSU, uninstalled and reinstalled Nvidia drivers, and even freshly installed Win10.

Strangely, I just now noticed that my bus clock is reading 102.4 MHz occasionally. Is this normal?

Here's to hoping the freezing/crashing has stopped.

# ? Mar 13, 2016 06:28

Rexxed: May 1, 2010; Dis is amazing!
I gotta try dis!

betterinsodapop posted:

I had previously posted about what I believed was a faulty PSU. After replacing it, however, I continue to have the same issue: seemingly random freezing.
I checked both of my hard drives for errors, tested my RAM, replaced my PSU, uninstalled and reinstalled Nvidia drivers, and even freshly installed Win10.

Strangely, I just now noticed that my bus clock is reading 102.4 MHz occasionally. Is this normal?

Here's to hoping the freezing/crashing has stopped.

There can be some wiggle room on bus speeds because sometimes the software that reads them is off or the sensors are. If you continue to have trouble you'll probably want to open a Haus thread.

# ? Mar 13, 2016 23:56

betterinsodapop: Apr 4, 2004; 64:3

Rexxed posted:

There can be some wiggle room on bus speeds because sometimes the software that reads them is off or the sensors are. If you continue to have trouble you'll probably want to open a Haus thread.

Ah ok, well that's one thing to rule out, thanks. Still getting the freeze/crash issue. Driving me nuts.

# ? Mar 14, 2016 04:42

Cactus Jack: Nov 16, 2005; If you even try to throw to my side of the field in a dream, you better wake up and apologize.

betterinsodapop posted:

My PC keeps randomly powering down, and then back up.
I checked Event Viewer, and it said: Critical Kernel Power, Event ID 41, Task 63.
Googled this, but nobody seems to be able to pin it down.

The first things I thought of:
my surge protector needs to be replaced
my PSU might be making GBS threads the bed

The PSU is a good brand and model (Seasonic Gold X750) and is probably 4 years old.

Any input is appreciated.

I had something similar to this on my storage server and it turned out to be the OS drive was dying. I checked ram, power, ran numerous chkdsk on the OS drive, checked temps, used CDI to check SMART info, etc. Nothing would fix it, I would just get random power downs or freezes. Finally one day it decided to crap itself once again and when I checked CDI it had thrown a reallocated sector. I replaced the disk and my storage server hasn't had a problem since.

# ? Mar 14, 2016 11:45

Ineptitude: Mar 2, 2010; Heed my words and become a master of the Heart _{(of Thorns)}.

Its about time for me to build a new desktop computer. My current one is from Aug 2010 and works fine for my needs except for the fact that lately it has gotten so drat noisy. (it is also getting quite slow for photo editing and to an extent gaming)

The last few times i have built computers i have started out with the mindset that i want a silent computer and that water cooling is the way to go, but always ended up not going for water cooling as i have been told that "water cooling is not more silent than fans and is primarily for users wanting to overclock"
is this still the case? Is it a misconception by me to think that water cooling = no sound?
Or is it more a matter of how much money i sink into the components?

# ? Mar 14, 2016 13:12

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Ineptitude posted:

Its about time for me to build a new desktop computer. My current one is from Aug 2010 and works fine for my needs except for the fact that lately it has gotten so drat noisy. (it is also getting quite slow for photo editing and to an extent gaming)

The last few times i have built computers i have started out with the mindset that i want a silent computer and that water cooling is the way to go, but always ended up not going for water cooling as i have been told that "water cooling is not more silent than fans and is primarily for users wanting to overclock"
is this still the case? Is it a misconception by me to think that water cooling = no sound?
Or is it more a matter of how much money i sink into the components?

Water cooling will always be louder than air cooling because you still need fans to move air through the radiator, and now you have an additional pump, which is often louder than the fans. Basically the pumped water is taking the place of the normally silent heat pipes in a tower heatsink. I went with a top-end water cooling system (NZXT Kraken X61) on my most recent machine and I would have been better off with a standard tower heatsink. Water cooling can make sense for videocards since you can't fit a large tower heatsink, and you can exhaust a large amount of heat from the system rather than having it build up inside the case.

Alereon fucked around with this message at 15:11 on Mar 14, 2016

# ? Mar 14, 2016 15:08

emocrat: Feb 28, 2007; Sidewalk Technology

Question about Monitors, displayport and HDMI.

I have a Surface book, and I have the surface dock along with it. I normally run 3 screens, like this:

Screen 1 | The actual screen on surface book
Screen 2 | Surface Dock -->Mini displayport to HDMI adapter --->1080p monitor
Screen 3 | Surface Dock -->Mini displayport to HDMI adapter --->1080p monitor

I also have a 1080p Television on the wall in my office that I use when I want to go over something in a small meeting setting. I had thought I could just insert an HDMI splitter inline for screen 3 and have that screen mirrored on the TV. However, when I did that the screen went black on both screen 3 and the TV.

Is there a specific type of splitter need? or am I missing something and this will never work?

# ? Mar 14, 2016 15:49

Skarsnik: Oct 21, 2008; I...AM...RUUUDE!

Alereon posted:

Water cooling will always be louder than air cooling because you still need fans to move air through the radiator, and now you have an additional pump, which is often louder than the fans. Basically the pumped water is taking the place of the normally silent heat pipes in a tower heatsink. I went with a top-end water cooling system (NZXT Kraken X61) on my most recent machine and I would have been better off with a standard tower heatsink. Water cooling can make sense for videocards since you can't fit a large tower heatsink, and you can exhaust a large amount of heat from the system rather than having it build up inside the case.

Yeah as far as watercooling for silence goes its the graphics card that makes the difference

My setup is completely silent including the pump, but I could get the same noise level air cooling the cpu . Not sure I entirely agree about pumps being loud, it depends on how you run them

But the blower on a graphics card is louder than all of it combined under load, as I found for the half an hour testing a new card before fitting a waterblock to it

# ? Mar 14, 2016 21:10

Shaocaholica: Oct 29, 2002; Fig. 5E

Video related question, not sure if there's a better thread though. AV?

Anyway, I have a W-VHS deck I want to do a review on. In short, W-VHS was an obscure high end analog tape format that hardly anyone knows anything about and could record 1080i over component back in the 90s (eat that DVD).

I want to capture the 1080i output from the deck to cut into a video review. However, it seems like component capture devices have been dead(development, not production) for quite a while but HDMI capture is quite alive. Should I try to find an older well rated component capture device or should I get a new-ish HDMI converter and capture over converted HDMI? My reasoning is that maybe a newer component to HDMI converter box would have better hardware than an older component native capture box.

Yeah I know trial and error is the best to solve these riddles but wanted to get some opinions first.

# ? Mar 15, 2016 00:50

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Skarsnik posted:

Yeah as far as watercooling for silence goes its the graphics card that makes the difference

My setup is completely silent including the pump, but I could get the same noise level air cooling the cpu . Not sure I entirely agree about pumps being loud, it depends on how you run them

But the blower on a graphics card is louder than all of it combined under load, as I found for the half an hour testing a new card before fitting a waterblock to it

Many pumps aren't loud, but if you're using low-noise fans then the pump will be the loudest thing in your case.

# ? Mar 15, 2016 00:56

fishmech: Jul 16, 2006; by VideoGames; Salad Prong

Shaocaholica posted:

Video related question, not sure if there's a better thread though. AV?

Anyway, I have a W-VHS deck I want to do a review on. In short, W-VHS was an obscure high end analog tape format that hardly anyone knows anything about and could record 1080i over component back in the 90s (eat that DVD).

I want to capture the 1080i output from the deck to cut into a video review. However, it seems like component capture devices have been dead(development, not production) for quite a while but HDMI capture is quite alive. Should I try to find an older well rated component capture device or should I get a new-ish HDMI converter and capture over converted HDMI? My reasoning is that maybe a newer component to HDMI converter box would have better hardware than an older component native capture box.

Yeah I know trial and error is the best to solve these riddles but wanted to get some opinions first.

Any high quality component capture device from like 5-10 years ago is still going to be perfectly fine for capturing anything that can go over component. Just make sure it's something that'll work with your PC - you're going to want it to be a PCI-Express card probably. The biggest thing that's important is having a nice modern computer that can handle encoding it to your output format better (incidentally, you should probably master that to h.265 if you can)

I'd suggest checking out reviews and finding ones that mention having Vista/7 compatibility, because then they'll almost certainly work with 7/8/10.

# ? Mar 15, 2016 01:56

Hexel: Nov 18, 2011

Yo dudes, I'm gonna be installing two 980ti's to run in SLI when my mobo comes tomorrow- my question is: Is it better to run 4 8 pin pcie cables to power these or just use two cables with 4 leads? I can do either or.

I've read unsubstantiated posts elsewhere about running only 2 cables with 4 leads melting because of how hot these cards get and how much power they draw, thanks.

# ? Mar 15, 2016 06:41

Geemer: Nov 4, 2010

Shaocaholica posted:

Video related question, not sure if there's a better thread though. AV?

Anyway, I have a W-VHS deck I want to do a review on. In short, W-VHS was an obscure high end analog tape format that hardly anyone knows anything about and could record 1080i over component back in the 90s (eat that DVD).

I want to capture the 1080i output from the deck to cut into a video review. However, it seems like component capture devices have been dead(development, not production) for quite a while but HDMI capture is quite alive. Should I try to find an older well rated component capture device or should I get a new-ish HDMI converter and capture over converted HDMI? My reasoning is that maybe a newer component to HDMI converter box would have better hardware than an older component native capture box.

Yeah I know trial and error is the best to solve these riddles but wanted to get some opinions first.

Maybe ask in the Let's Play subforum's tech support thread. They should be able to point you in the right direction.

# ? Mar 15, 2016 07:49

Desuwa: Jun 2, 2011; I'm telling my mommy. That pubbie doesn't do video games right!

crew posted:

Yo dudes, I'm gonna be installing two 980ti's to run in SLI when my mobo comes tomorrow- my question is: Is it better to run 4 8 pin pcie cables to power these or just use two cables with 4 leads? I can do either or.

I've read unsubstantiated posts elsewhere about running only 2 cables with 4 leads melting because of how hot these cards get and how much power they draw, thanks.

For what it's worth my 860W Seagate PSU's manual "recommends" to use separate cables when dealing with graphics cards that pull over 225W. Since it's only a firm recommendation it's probably in spec but there isn't a lot of safety margin. Just run the four cables.

# ? Mar 15, 2016 08:07

Earl of Lavender: Jul 29, 2007; This is not my beautiful house!!

This is not my beautiful wife!!!; Pillbug

I'm on a quest to discover why my Win10 machine starts back up after shutting down. Also, why the mouse and keyboard can start my machine from shutdown.

In spite of that option being disabled for both mouse and keyboard in the BIOS. And not flagged as being able to wake the computer in device management in Windows.

Any ideas?

# ? Mar 15, 2016 11:56

Ineptitude: Mar 2, 2010; Heed my words and become a master of the Heart _{(of Thorns)}.

Alereon posted:

water

Skarsnik posted:

water

Thanks!

Sounds like the noise levels from either setup isn't all that different then, if you put water cooling on your GPU. Would it be fair to say that water cooling is slightly noisier by default but doesn't have as increased noise level as air cooled does when working on max capacity? (Theres a huge difference in noise coming from my PC when its idling compared to when i am gaming for instance)

I have always been curious about water cooling and am really considering trying it out this time. Is the method of selecting components the same as for an air cooled PC?

E.g. read reviews and find good price/quality components then match "sockets", e.g CPU with socket 1174 goes on motherboard with socket 1174.

Is socket matching still a thing? I remember that has been a big focus on my previous builds, the motherboard has to fit in the tower, the cpu and ram on the motherboard. Is socket matching and/or has it ever been a thing for water cooling or do you just buy the components you like and they will fit?

# ? Mar 15, 2016 13:33

Hexel: Nov 18, 2011

Desuwa posted:

For what it's worth my 860W Seagate PSU's manual "recommends" to use separate cables when dealing with graphics cards that pull over 225W. Since it's only a firm recommendation it's probably in spec but there isn't a lot of safety margin. Just run the four cables.

Thanks bud will do

# ? Mar 15, 2016 14:28

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Ineptitude posted:

Thanks!

Sounds like the noise levels from either setup isn't all that different then, if you put water cooling on your GPU. Would it be fair to say that water cooling is slightly noisier by default but doesn't have as increased noise level as air cooled does when working on max capacity? (Theres a huge difference in noise coming from my PC when its idling compared to when i am gaming for instance)

I have always been curious about water cooling and am really considering trying it out this time. Is the method of selecting components the same as for an air cooled PC?

E.g. read reviews and find good price/quality components then match "sockets", e.g CPU with socket 1174 goes on motherboard with socket 1174.

Is socket matching still a thing? I remember that has been a big focus on my previous builds, the motherboard has to fit in the tower, the cpu and ram on the motherboard. Is socket matching and/or has it ever been a thing for water cooling or do you just buy the components you like and they will fit?

Check out the Parts Picking Megathread for info and advice. For GPU watercooling check out the Arctic Accelero Hybrid III-140, there are also adapter kits that let you mount CPU watercoolers to videocards.

# ? Mar 15, 2016 15:25

skooma512: Feb 8, 2012; You couldn't grok my race car, but you dug the roadside blur.

Is there any UPS manufacturer I should go with or they all pretty much equal?

# ? Mar 15, 2016 17:11

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

I'm after some networking pointers - what would be the best way to link two offices together, in order that IP phones in one office can see the phone system in the main office?

Currently the place I work at has two offices, separated by about 200 miles. We have a phone system in the main office and a load of IP phones that talk over the network. nice and simple. For the other office I've setup a 'site to site' VPN using two Draytek 2860s (with different networks in each office) for the IP phones there to talk to the main site, and this seems to work fine.

BUT, every now and then, we get really crappy voice quality either between sites on internal calls, or on external calls from the second office, or both.

Usual course of action is 'reboot' one or both ends of the site to site link, but I have also replaced both routers in the last six months, and the problem still occurs.

Main office has 70/70meg leased line, other office has 'home fibre' which is about 70 down and 20 up.

Is there a better way to link the two sites so that the phones can route through the phone system?
Web traffic can go out over each sites respective connection, but calls (and the call handling software loaded on the PCs) needs to communicate with the main site over the site to site link.

I actually have a budget! so I can buy better / different hardware if needed, so any hardware or software suggestions are gratefully received, as its a loving pain in the arse to get bombarded with 'the phones are crap again' calls when I have a thousand other things to do.

# ? Mar 15, 2016 18:22

my cat is norris: Mar 11, 2010; #onecallcat

Mom's wondering what kind of DOCSIS modem would offer the best bang for her buck. Her new internet service is offering only 60mbps speeds, so she doesn't need something crazy top of the line or whatever, especially since she's not going to be the most demanding user. Barely even Netflixes (though she does make heavy use of her MLB subscription). Any product suggestions?

ETA that I'm only asking because I don't want her to get stuck with a pile of crap. Any issues with recommending something like this?

http://www.amazon.com/SURFboard-SB6121-DOCSIS-Retail-Packaging/dp/B004XC6GJ0/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1458068075&sr=8-3&keywords=docsis+modem

my cat is norris fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Mar 15, 2016

# ? Mar 15, 2016 19:48

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

skooma512 posted:

Is there any UPS manufacturer I should go with or they all pretty much equal?

Anything not no-name garbage should be fine, but make sure it has true sine-wave output or it won't work correctly with modern computers. CyberPower has a line of inexpensive true sine UPSes.

my cat is norris posted:

Mom's wondering what kind of DOCSIS modem would offer the best bang for her buck. Her new internet service is offering only 60mbps speeds, so she doesn't need something crazy top of the line or whatever, especially since she's not going to be the most demanding user. Barely even Netflixes (though she does make heavy use of her MLB subscription). Any product suggestions?

ETA that I'm only asking because I don't want her to get stuck with a pile of crap. Any issues with recommending something like this?

http://www.amazon.com/SURFboard-SB6121-DOCSIS-Retail-Packaging/dp/B004XC6GJ0/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1458068075&sr=8-3&keywords=docsis+modem

You'd want at least a Surfboard 6141 for compatibility with a decent range of speeds. She'll likely get upgraded to DOCSIS 3.1 within a couple years so definitely don't spend too much on a modem. As with anything, make sure any products you buy through Amazon.com are both shipped and sold by Amazon. Your link is to a third-party seller.

# ? Mar 15, 2016 19:59

my cat is norris: Mar 11, 2010; #onecallcat

Thanks, Alereon!

# ? Mar 15, 2016 20:26

Grapeshot: Oct 21, 2010

Earl of Lavender posted:

I'm on a quest to discover why my Win10 machine starts back up after shutting down. Also, why the mouse and keyboard can start my machine from shutdown.

In spite of that option being disabled for both mouse and keyboard in the BIOS. And not flagged as being able to wake the computer in device management in Windows.

Any ideas?

Is the system actually shutting down or just hibernating when you select shut down like Windows 10 does by default? Try disabling Hybrid Shutdown in the power management settings, you'll have to search for how to do that because I remember the option is very well hidden. Also your boot times will increase a lot.

# ? Mar 16, 2016 17:46

dont be mean to me: May 2, 2007; I'm interplanetary, bitch
Let's go to Mars

Grapeshot posted:

Is the system actually shutting down or just hibernating when you select shut down like Windows 10 does by default? Try disabling Hybrid Shutdown in the power management settings, you'll have to search for how to do that because I remember the option is very well hidden. Also your boot times will increase a lot.

It's called Fast Startup and it's been in Power Options under "Choose what the power buttons do" since 8.

# ? Mar 16, 2016 22:14

Earl of Lavender: Jul 29, 2007; This is not my beautiful house!!

This is not my beautiful wife!!!; Pillbug

Grapeshot posted:

Is the system actually shutting down or just hibernating when you select shut down like Windows 10 does by default? Try disabling Hybrid Shutdown in the power management settings, you'll have to search for how to do that because I remember the option is very well hidden. Also your boot times will increase a lot.

As far as I know it's shutting down for real - hiberfil.sys is disabled through powercfg; subsequently, the option in the power settings to disable fast startup disappeared, so I applied a reghack to force the issue:

code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Power]
"HiberbootEnabled"=dword:00000000

Fast startup also seems to be disabled in BIOS (ASRock H97M Pro4, latest BIOS version). The auto-startup thing seems to come and go, and may or may not have stopped since I moved my mouse and keyboard back to USB2 ports from the USB3. I can still start my machine by hitting the enter key, though.

Technology :shepicide:

# ? Mar 16, 2016 23:43

Desuwa: Jun 2, 2011; I'm telling my mommy. That pubbie doesn't do video games right!

So I've got a problem I think I've more or less narrowed down, but I'd like a second opinion on it.

I've got a 6700k running at stock speeds, and for now I'm just using the iGPU before I transfer over my existing video card. With 2133mhz DDR4 RAM there are no visible issues, but with overclocked RAM (2800mhz on a kit that I'm returning because it won't POST with XMP enabled, 3200mhz on my current kit) there is visible display corruption and choppiness in Windows. Benchmarks pass just fine, no crashes are evident, and memtest completed a full pass on all four DIMMs at 3200mhz with no errors detected. Whenever memtest touches the early parts of the memory (I assume when the iGPU's portion gets relocated temporarily) there is display corruption in memtest, but no errors are detected.

To me it seems like I got some bad silicon for the iGPU that can't handle overclocked RAM but is stable for memory that's still inside the DDR4 spec. Does that sound like a reasonable conclusion?

I'm thinking that the passing memtest despite the obvious visible artifacts rules out the RAM (whatever errors I'm seeing are obvious well before the stress multiple passes would be necessary to trigger) and the motherboard, and the lack of crashes and general stability rules out the CPU core itself, at least at stock clocks.

e: Decided to go ahead and move my video card over earlier than I planned. No artifacts or issues.

Trying to overclock this 6700k shows that I lost the lottery pretty badly. At the same voltages other people are getting 4.7ghz I'm not even stable with 4.5.

Desuwa fucked around with this message at 08:51 on Mar 17, 2016

# ? Mar 17, 2016 04:03

RescueFreak: Sep 8, 2013

Any ideas what to do with an old server?

I picked up a Dell SC1430 that was being "retired" and now have no clue what to do with it. POSTs fine but has no hard drives. It is a dual Xeon E5345 2.3ghz (8 cores) with 16 GB of ram and a PERC 5 raid card. Also has a COA for Server 2008.

Was thinking maybe a NAS but it is pretty loud and worried it would not be power efficient. Because it is so old doubt I could resell or part it out. Might put it back in the trash pile.

# ? Mar 17, 2016 06:04

HalloKitty: Sep 30, 2005; Adjust the bass and let the Alpine blast

RescueFreak posted:

Any ideas what to do with an old server?

I picked up a Dell SC1430 that was being "retired" and now have no clue what to do with it. POSTs fine but has no hard drives. It is a dual Xeon E5345 2.3ghz (8 cores) with 16 GB of ram and a PERC 5 raid card. Also has a COA for Server 2008.

Was thinking maybe a NAS but it is pretty loud and worried it would not be power efficient. Because it is so old doubt I could resell or part it out. Might put it back in the trash pile.

People buy stuff worse than that on ebay, you could easily sell it. Not for a huge amount, but you could. But I guess for collection only, if you want to save headaches.

It's the sort of thing you could use to run VMs on for testing, but it's really not suitable for NAS use, as because, as you said, loud and not that efficient.

# ? Mar 17, 2016 10:24

Junior Jr.: Oct 4, 2014; by sebmojo; Buglord

I'm looking for components to build an MS-DOS/Windows 95/98 PC. Does anyone know any sites where I can buy some old Intel motherboards with PCI slots only?

# ? Mar 20, 2016 10:38

fishmech: Jul 16, 2006; by VideoGames; Salad Prong

Junior Jr. posted:

I'm looking for components to build an MS-DOS/Windows 95/98 PC. Does anyone know any sites where I can buy some old Intel motherboards with PCI slots only?

Just as a headsup: you should probably just buy a used laptop from a few years after the last game you wanted to play came out. And then purchase a cheap IDE SSD to slap in and USB/ethernet PCMCIA cards in case the laptop you pick doesn't have USB 2.0 or ethernet. Don't worry about the screen or battery working, as you'd just hook them up to a VGA monitor. So for instance if you want to play games from 1998, get a laptop from 2000/2001. Want games from 1995, 1998 or so.

But if you're sure you want to do a desktop, or you'll be playing certain games that only work well with certain expansion cards, consider searching for "Intel SE440BX" based motherboards on eBay if you'll be building a Pentium II system. There's no hard favorites for Pentium 1 or III systems, but if you're going to do pentium III you'll want a socket based one, not a slot based.

# ? Mar 20, 2016 16:17

BlackMK4: Aug 23, 2006; wat.; Megamarm

If I wanted to buy the cheapest / small footprint PC I could find for Windows whatever / SQL Express / Visual Studio without being painfully slow for building what should I buy? I'm tired of running this in a VM.

# ? Mar 20, 2016 19:10

Geoj: May 28, 2008; BITTER POOR PERSON

BlackMK4 posted:

If I wanted to buy the cheapest / small footprint PC I could find for Windows whatever / SQL Express / Visual Studio without being painfully slow for building what should I buy? I'm tired of running this in a VM.

Intel NUC, depending on your budget/requirements available with anything from a dual core Celeron all the way up to an i7. Add your choice of mSATA SSD, laptop RAM and if needed a PCIE mini WiFi adapter.

# ? Mar 20, 2016 20:31

Not Wolverine: Jul 1, 2007

Junior Jr. posted:

I'm looking for components to build an MS-DOS/Windows 95/98 PC. Does anyone know any sites where I can buy some old Intel motherboards with PCI slots only?

The 8-Bit Guy on youtube recently did a write up on choosing the best laptop to play DOS games. The video talked about buying a Pentium 1 laptop for about $20-50 and being good to go.

https://youtu.be/k2v7k-wAm2E

# ? Mar 20, 2016 20:37

BlackMK4: Aug 23, 2006; wat.; Megamarm

Geoj posted:

Intel NUC, depending on your budget/requirements available with anything from a dual core Celeron all the way up to an i7. Add your choice of mSATA SSD, laptop RAM and if needed a PCIE mini WiFi adapter.

Is there a logical increments type site for the NUC? It seems like there are a shitload available and they aren't well described.

# ? Mar 20, 2016 20:45

Geoj: May 28, 2008; BITTER POOR PERSON

Is this what you're looking for?

# ? Mar 20, 2016 20:51

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# ? May 16, 2024 23:23

BlackMK4: Aug 23, 2006; wat.; Megamarm

Geoj posted:

Is this what you're looking for?

Kinda, this helped a little more.
http://nucblog.net/build-your-own-nuc/

# ? Mar 20, 2016 21:33

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > HARDWARE Short Questions That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread - Reloaded

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