cheapest fix?

i blew out alot of hardware yesterday, and i dont have much $$ to get it going again. lets say its a "celeron" budget.

Rig in Sig:

blew a chunk out of the core of my beloved 30 capper northwood -2.8C
its all crackled and looks like the moon. yes, the whole core. pits and hairline cracks everywhere. -$210

stepped on my 120MM fan used to cool the XP 120 during troubleshooting, was too frustrated to look after it properly, and it unded up underfoot, instead of the shelf. lucky i had my shoes on, it i would have had the need for stiches. blade cracked at hub. -$18

most likely fried my bios as well. -$30

allso need to get thermal paste.

so yeah, i lost about $250 in parts yesterday, and so now the rig is nearly totaled.
its even hard to think of spending $100 to get it going again-
but as we all know, its not worth buying or building a new rig untill LATE 2006 when all the third generation hardware comes out, i know i certianly wont have the money for that till then.

is it fixable for $100 or under, and is it worth it?

the cheapest celeron on newegg is like $65, and i dont think it would even work in my rig...do i just go without a main rig for another year ( and a quarter) ?

if your in a real need to game or use a computer then go ahead and buy the new parts. But if you really want to make good use for your dollars than wait.

Really sorry to hear about your loss man. I woulda ****ed myself if that happened.

so the word is, spend as little as possible to get it going again.
i think thats the plan. no sense in making a major upgrade out of it.

great, from a northwood to a 90NM celeron...
that 2.8c was my favorite part of the whole rig. i miss it allready.

so im looking at newegg, and all the cheap chips are for 400/533FSb.
i mean, i can drop it down to 400, but i dont think it will post with one of those...

matter of fact, there arent ANY celerons listed for 478 with 800FSB....
now i gotta put a full-on prescott, at a full-on price on a northwood board?
i dont like this at all...

Well this won't blow your socks off exactly and I don't expect the mobo is an overclocker, but for a useable stock rig on the cheap it might be just the thing...
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=M7VIG400-2600-N&cpc=HFP

Should feel "snappier" than any but the top one or two latest celerons at stock too.
Being a mobile chip though, you might even get 2.5ghz out of it despite the cheapy mobo and cooler.

anyhoo, thought it was a decent deal for what it was and may "put you on" a bit until you can afford the intel chip of your dreams.

Road Warrior

Just curious....

What in the heck did you do to blow a chunk out of your core?

(so I can avoid it )

RoadWarrior said:

Well this won't blow your socks off exactly and I don't expect the mobo is an overclocker, but for a useable stock rig on the cheap it might be just the thing...
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=M7VIG400-2600-N&cpc=HFP

Should feel "snappier" than any but the top one or two latest celerons at stock too.
Being a mobile chip though, you might even get 2.5ghz out of it despite the cheapy mobo and cooler.

anyhoo, thought it was a decent deal for what it was and may "put you on" a bit until you can afford the intel chip of your dreams.

Road Warrior

Click to expand...

ohhh, that looks like just the thing!
i perfer intels, because its what i know, and the AMD stuff is a bit intangible, but ive not got anything against them really...looks like money well spent, annd a chance to play with an AMD for a year! ive allways wanted to try one out...onboard graphix (S3 none the less, thats a blast from the past!) i might just have to take the bait....

what kind of monkey buisness might i have to do to get windows happy?
i would hate to buy my 7th copy because M$ thinks i stole it and slapped on someone elses rig (as allways happens) ....

AGampher said:

Just curious....

What in the heck did you do to blow a chunk out of your core?

(so I can avoid it )

Click to expand...

wish i knew. i just made home-made (ghetto) waxpads from a strip of an old sheet and some candle wax, temps were surprisingly good, normal in fact, just a few degrees above what the caramique gave me - things ran great for a few hours...then bang, right in the middle of everything, the whole rig powers off..

was it the wax-pads? i cant say. i sure dont think so, it wasnt a sloppy job, there was no melted wax all over. it just diddnt make sense...

i thought i might have fried the bios again, because "miss asus" was yelling at me, but then after about 10 reboots, without a POST i smell something...
i reach up and grab the heatpipe om my XP-120 and if burns me.
i quickly short the PSU black to green (i knew i left the cheater switch on there for something) and crank the fans - i diddnt know it, but it was too late. after it cooled, i let it sit over night.
this morning i set about the delicate job of pulling the heat sperader.(steppped on the fan at some point too, i just dropped it on the ground because i was focused on my proc) it was surprisingly easy, considering the amount of silicone sealent that it was supposedly held on with. wondering if the wax was leaked inside, and all over i carefully warmed it up, and lo and behold, not even a film inside. just a slight film on the outside, just like i thought.

there was a silver compound of sorts on the thing, a bit scorched around the big crater with little shards of northwood which i brushed away (or took on as splinters in the finger), to get a better look, i went at the surface oh-so-carefully with a razorblade, and scraped the silver stuff away.
thats when i realised not only was there a crater, but the entire surface of the core was crazed and shattered. at first it allmost looked like big-flake galvanized, in a tiny sort of way, but i helt it up to the light just so, and i saw not only many smaller craters, but teeny, tiny lines running all over it. i would decribe it as cracked and crazed. with craters. craters and valley's i guess.
i imagine its something that would look like a post apocalyptic missile range if i ware small enough to walk around on it.

why do i allways have to be the deviant? why is my SNDS different than everyone elses?
blah. thats the story i guess...
ill have to link this thread the the official SNDS thing i suppose....

Wow, tough break.

Dunno about reactivating XP, if you bought full retail and you're polite on the phone, you should have a problem. If it was an OEM copy, then it depends what you told them you bought it with before, if it was the mobo or CPU or whole system you might be SOL. If it was with the HDD or something, then they might be okay with it.

I'd try to avoid anything but conventional thermal materials on the AMD if you get it though.

Road Warrior

i know its bad, but ive found that a 478 prescott is the same price as the new cheap combo kit + and copy of XP. not willing to buy another copy, i think i would like to just buy a prescott, fan, and bios chip and cry about it later.

might my P4P800Deluxe hold up a year with a prescott? i know thats pushing it, but what could i expect? i run the rig naked, with an XP-120, so heat isnt really a big issue, but will the board hold?

If you have limited funds don't expect the motherboard to be an easy fix. If it turns out you toasted more than the BIOS than you'll be stuck with the other parts you paid for. Do you have any friends nearby that could test the motherboard for you with a replacement BIOS chip and alternate CPU?

Captain Slug said:

If you have limited funds don't expect the motherboard to be an easy fix. If it turns out you toasted more than the BIOS than you'll be stuck with the other parts you paid for. Do you have any friends nearby that could test the motherboard for you with a replacement BIOS chip and alternate CPU?

Click to expand...

ive thought of that. i guess its easy to take chences with thoughts like that when frustrated. no one around this town has simmilar hardware, im allmost sure.

i KNOW the CPU is dead, its got a chunk missing from the core.
i would be willing to bet i would need a new Bios chip, but maybe not.
in all times past, my bios acted like a fuse, preventing board damage during big O/C runs. in other words, i dont have the foggiest idea weather the board is dead or not. never in my life fried a processor, so i dont know the likelyhood of board damage.
dont know if my Video card is still good,
dont know weahter my ram is still good,
nor my soundcard (the onboard works and yells at me)
dont know if my wireless works.

i guess i better test other hardware and see where i stand.
heres where it gets fun.

ive got a 1.9 northwood (wilamette?) hanging around and if i could get it to post, i could crank my FSB down to 400 or 533 and just use that. yay, fun.
of course, there is no booting a chip like that at 800FSB at all, so i cant even post to crank it down. any ideas or cheats?

cant test the ram - the other desktop in the house is a dell 8250 - something tells me its rambus, and a no go.

ive got an old 400MHZ celeron i can at least test the vidcard in.
the soundcard and wireless i might be able to test in the dell, but i would have to ask the owner, and its not likely.

im gonna test some of this stuff after a shower ( saturday fix-it) and re asses the "cheap combo kit" idea...
i wish i could get that 1.9 to post, is there a way to maybe reflash the bios AND have the settings programed in that would support the chip as relates to FSB?

RoadWarrior said:

I'd try to avoid anything but conventional thermal materials on the AMD if you get it though.

Click to expand...

*nod* AMDs seem to be much pickier about thermal materials; I do know that running it for even a short period with no HSF is CPU suicide (haven't done it myself, but "witnessed" someone on another forum do so).

orionlion82 said:

thats when i realised not only was there a crater, but the entire surface of the core was crazed and shattered. at first it allmost looked like big-flake galvanized, in a tiny sort of way, but i helt it up to the light just so, and i saw not only many smaller craters, but teeny, tiny lines running all over it. i would decribe it as cracked and crazed. with craters. craters and valley's i guess.

Click to expand...

Damn, that's rough. I would go with the combo kit myself.

What did the sheet look like? Was it heat-damaged in any way? IIRC most thermal pads are just wax (or similar).

orionlion82 said:

its even hard to think of spending $100 to get it going again-
but as we all know, its not worth buying or building a new rig untill LATE 2006 when all the third generation hardware comes out, i know i certianly wont have the money for that till then.

Click to expand...

Whoa... what? Any links to explain this to me?

chaoticdonkey said:

Whoa... what? Any links to explain this to me?

Click to expand...

well, that was more the enhusiast who carefully follows the market speaking.

right now, theres STILL not much better than a 478 based platform, aside from the ultra high end stuff. matter of fact, i think you can still get an average-joe machine from dell thats 478 based, but dont hold me to it....
sure things are slowly getting better, but just like the switch to the 775 platform, there will be a few hardware incompatabilities beginning soon between the first generation 775 stuff, and what will be coming late 2006, which will make all the current hardware look like a stopgap, and the second generation 775 stuff look like the real deal. of course, some of it is hype, but some of it is allso backlash and its correction regarding the first generation 775 stuff.
i was all excited about that new mobile chip (now how could i forget the name?) , but apparently, the good stuff to focus on is after that. thats where im shooting fot a new build, and thats when ill have the funds together.

for now, i just really cant justify repairing, or even getting a new cheap rig.
i would love to slap a prescott in, cool it heavily, get a new bios and hope for the best. i would love to play with a budget AMD rig.
unfortunately the wisest move i can make is NOT to throw a few hundred dollars around, ($ that is really reserved for other more essential things) and just live with it and use this old slow laptop when i can.