Just a guy with a love for tech

Build Updates (Dec 2022)

Adam L December 15, 2022

Voodoo

Voodoo is now in the final stretch,

Things still to do are:

I was hoping to finish this sooner, but as I was testing, the power supply that came with the case is completely of inadequate quality, the voltage rails don't hold stable and the brand "Premier" is known for its propensity to fail suddenly and cause damage due to incorrect voltages or even short across rails, giving 5v/3.3v devices 12v so before I can continue with the build, this will need replacing.

I have ordered a new PSU but again unfortunately due to lots of industrial action taking place including mail service strikes the PSU will take quite some time to arrive and paying for faster services also does not guarantee it to arrive sooner as I found out recently.

Also, the Matrox Millennium G200A AGP arrived so now Voodoo will also have great 2D capabilities.

Dominator

Dominator is essentially complete, Windows 98 is currently installed but I think I'll dual boot with 2000

Things still to do are:

Cold Fusion

Cold Fusion was complete bar installing an OS, unfortunately during the last round of hardware testing I started to experience hard locks whilst in the BIOS or when trying to boot testing software.

Suspecting that it was the GPU, I ordered a GTX 280 that I planned to upgrade to eventually and tested with that but even then it would still lockup, I even tried a simple, known working PCI Matrox VGA card but it still did the same thing.

Yesterday, it stopped POSTing completely and now does nothing at all.

I tried different RAM, replaced the CMOS battery, cleaned, resocketed everything, swapped PSUs. Nothing.

Suspecting a failed motherboard I have ordered a new one which should be here in a few days with any luck and I'll be able to finish this machine.

However, if this doesn't work the only part I haven't changed is the CPU, but I've never known a CPU to "go bad", I still have CPUs from the 70s and 80s that work perfectly, so I can't understand how an 14 year old one would suddenly fail especially since it was working only a few days ago.

The replacement motherboard, a ASUS P5N-T Deluxe isn't quite as strong as the ASUS Striker II Formula but should easily be capable enough for what I'll be doing with it. Triple SLI is not likely to ever happen, not without a bigger case and stronger PSU anyway. Two-way SLI is still an option and the board should easily cope with that. 10 USB slots that I'll probably only ever use 2 or 3 of. The SATA will be saturated by the SSD for sure.

What's interesting is that I couldn't find a single S2F board available for sale, either they all stopped working like mine or people really don't want to give them up.

Piledriver

Amazingly, Piledriver is practically done. The GPU (AMD HD7970) arrived yesterday and was promptly installed.

A fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate went on last night along with some drivers, cables tidied and the case buttoned up.

So far this has been the easiet build yet! From design to OS install, only took a few weeks and most of that was waiting on parts due to the industrial action.

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