pio

Bump, really fixed OP's wording.

I mean I way overpaid for most of this junk..... But yeah, I'd pair it with any modern mid-range card or past gen high end card like an RX 580, R9 290x, GTX 1660Ti or whatever is equal, 1070Ti, or even an old 980Ti. The more VRAM the better these days of course. Find a deal on a used 1080 / 1080Ti even, and I'll bet it'll do just fine. Maybe a tad bottlenecked, but I'll bet you'd see an increase. 8 threads is 8 threads, these (later) FX CPU's compared almost identically to Ivy Bridge back in the day. Still absolutely usable and enjoyable today on a budget. Other than BeamNG.drive (which is HIGHLY CPU heavy with AI spawned), I legitimately cannot tell a lick of difference between this FX rig and my sig rig in games. General usability....meh, my NVME is obviously snappier than RAID0 BX500's, but its a close race. EDIT: I missed the "he's not going to be doing heavy gaming". Yeah, it'll do great.

So per the request of UltraMega, I went ahead and ran some benchmarks on this old FX 8 core / R9 290x. Unsurprisingly, it does better than my sig rig in games since the test bench is 1080p. I mean seriously, I'm amazed at how good RDR2 and Crysis Remastered look, just WOW. Definitely means I need to save up $2000 ish for a 6900XT now. Anyway, enough chit chat, onto the results! Apologies for double posting. Trying to keep actual information separated from conversations. Screenshots and CPU benchmarks (Cinebench / 3dMark): But then of course, I couldn't stop at just basic benchmarking. I had to show you guys how well it plays games too!!! I only ran 2, but they're the highest possible graphics / most extreme on a system games I had installed on here. Don't believe me? Check out the results for yourself!!! Games benchmarks: Sorry for not doing other games. I mean, these 2 alone absolutely blew me away with their performance as it was. Overall, this FX rig is definitely a keeper though.

I'll run Cinebench on her tonight. I can do a couple 3dmark runs too, not sure which ones I have but I can do that before I linux swap it. Games, I'd run, but really there's not much to say. I was playing RDR2 on it last night at 1080p / dead center preset settings. Cyberpunk was playing smoothly on low I think it was? (My Ryzen rig's settings at 1080p). I already knew BeamNG.drive played fine on it on High / 1080p seeing as how it was doing medium with the 7970 installed. And yes, it has been pretty bad up here. WA State is also on fire, yet again. 2 days ago on my drive home it looked like it was snowing. -_- Of course, per the usual lately in our state, we're being told one reason why but its actually another reason all together as to why these fires are happening. Yay. At least this year, the bigger fires were started by lightning. Too much dry fuel in our forests the last couple years. That's what happens after 10 years of no logging. If the forests aren't managed, they burn easy.

I've been using the Intel i350T4 in most of my rigs, I'm nowhere near setup for anything past gig speeds anyway. The i350T2 I'd imagine would be nearly identical as well if you needed something cheap and solid with just 2 ports. I chose a 4 port just in case. I used these in my NAS and VM box too, although I really probably did need 10g NIC's there, but whatever. It works. For the OPNsense box, you're going to want to plug that into a switch or something else anyway for the added ports for your LAN. More than likely anyway. I mean, you CAN use it as a full on router, even wireless. However that's going to need a bigger enclosure, and more PCIe NIC's, and its even more setup and troubleshooting on it later. By all means, try it out if you want to. Just my experience as an end user switching from commercial grade routers. I'm happy with mine just as a very intelligent gateway, firewall, dhcp, and vpn. And in that instance, all that's really needed is equal or faster than your ISP for the NIC's. 1 in / 1 out is all that's "required", but you can assign them to so many things its ridiculous. If you plan to be any advanced at all in your network, you might want to start off with a 4 port NIC. I'm using 3 ports, and the headaches are real (but wow its powerful). I only recommend mine because they were cheap, they're gig speed capable, they were cheap, and they work great in everything. Also, fair note, I'm by no means intelligent with networking gear. I make junk work, that's my specialty.

Anything in particular I should run on it before I put Mint on there for testing? I've got quite a few games on there with Win10 right now already. Debating on going Linux on my main rig for a while now, and this FX rig performs closely enough....might as well give it a try there first. EDIT: Also, I've submitted a request to return the Radeon 9800XT since I bought it less than 30 days ago. Really bummed out about that one, especially since I left the seller a good rating already because I was so excited for it. Le sigh. Let's see if he accepts the return or not. It gives a display, but its artifacting even on BIOS, and on desktop its completely unusable due to it. I guess I could try to bake it, but for $175 of paypal credit's money......I think he can take the return. It was, actually, advertised as a fully functional card. If I was actually taking a gamble on it, 1, I wouldn't have paid $175 for it, and 2, I wouldn't have found a listing that said in working condition.

Double or triple post. My apologies. This update is kind of entirely different than the previous ones. I unboxed my first Socket A rig this evening. EVERYTHING WORKS!!!! Got a test bench going on with the box it came in. Board, CPU, and RAM boot up to BIOS. It recognizes the IDE HDD I had laying around. Even both the Radeon 9800XT and X1950 Pro seem to be working (thus far). The 9800XT does seem to be having some artifacting at certain resolutions though. Not sure what's going on with that yet. I'll be getting these going soon enough. I do really need to get busy on that busted front panel before I can build this one though. This Socket A setup (with the Radeon 9800XT) is intended to be going into that Chieftec Dragon case. Not sure what all add on cards I want to use with it yet. Definitely a sound card and wifi card. Not sure either about OS drive either, as IDE drives are incredibly slow, even for this rig. Either way, enjoy some unboxing and test bench pics of my first Socket A re-build of the 2020's.

Alright guys, after going through THREE R9 290x's, maybe even 4, I've lost count now.....I present to you all....... "Bulldrowser"! Specs: Asus 990FX Sabertooth FX 8350 @ 4.8GHz / NB and HT Link at 2.6GHz Coolermaster 240mm AIO with Arctic push / pull fans 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3-1866 @ 875MHz (DDR3-1750), 9-10-9-28-1T eVGA 700BQ PSU Sapphire R9 290x Intel AX200 wifi + BT Era appropriate Corsair case (unknown model) Zip tied extra fans (total of 6x Rosewill red LED fans and 4x Arctic P12's) Asus DVDRW SATA drive 2x Crucial BX500 240GB SSD RAID0 (480GB) 2x Toshiba 3TB 7200RPM SATA HDD RAID0 (6TB) (Yes the rad is sagging, no I don't care.... I need push / pull and that's the only way it fits) The goals of THIS rig was Windows 8 / 8.1 era stuff. However since its pretty close in performance to my main rig gaming wise, I might go ahead and try out Linux on it and see if I can survive daily on Linux with it for now. It's most definitely a heater, I can feel HOT heat coming out of that case with it idling. Greenies in my state can suck it (still sore about that new stupid law against gaming PC's being banned). I'm not going to bother with any benchmarks (unless asked for). It's an FX 8 core at 4.8GHz. We've all seen it. Again, happy to comply if anyone asks though.

Finally, someone that knows how to package pc parts! Unboxing and hopefully final fx rig pictures incoming tonight. Also, I got an old school package today. I don't know if I can try it out or not. Anyone know the psu requirements of a socket a Athlon 1.1ghz and a Radeon 9800xt (or x1950 but I don't think it'll work in a 4x)? EDIT: Added some unboxing pictures for your enjoyment.

I laugh, but yes.....

Another teaser. Side panel is headed to the metal shop tomorrow.

They're available on the egg, limit one per customer. Just got the email myself today. Tempted to do a 5600G mini ITX build now for the TV.

I was actually looking for one similar to that believe it or not. My first case (on OCN) was very similar as well, Apevia branded, with blue cathodes down the front. I still have pictures of it somewhere. EDIT: Found one. Front panel was different (had a glass DOOR instead of just plexi front panel), but its the same exact chassis. Of course, there's my OLD Chieftec Dragon that I had back in the day. Man what I'd do to get that same EXACT build back. Dual Pentium 3 1.1GHz chips overclocked to 1.5GHz and 2GB SDRAM (overclocked to 150MHz) is what was in that Dragon. It doesn't fit my plans at all, but a "dual core" Pentium 3 setup was freaking awesome back then!

Oh yeah!!! I forgot to upload the teaser of what arrived today! Case is intended for the Socket A / AthlonXP / Radeon X1950 build I'm slowly getting parts for. This was some Kingwin case from 2004, don't know the model number. Only thing I'm short for the Phenom II build (once everything arrives) is a storage drive. So that one will be done soon too. Going to try getting the Thuban built up first since I have everything except a drive. Then it'll be Socket A time!!! Still need to get with BWG to see if he was being srs about fixing that front panel for me. Otherwise, there's a local plastics company that'll do it. Just don't know their fee yet.

I've just accepted the fact that my RX580's will have to make due for the foreseeable future. I'd be happy enough if RX5700's were available at a decent price, or even Vega's. I can only dream about the 6900XT at this point, double MSRP.......*grumbles. Yeah nope. I'll wait and buy a used one at 1/4 MSRP. Till then, RX 580's it is. I don't participate in price hikes (other than second hand). Assuming the 6600XT would actually launch and be available at MSRP, its really not in a bad position. Not a card I'd be interested in, but definitely a good spot for one. The 5600XT's were kind of tempting too, so I'm sure this one will be as well.

I dunno, could've been. That was years ago. On OCN we were playing FEAR through till like 2007 / 2008 when COD4 kinda took over most of us lol.

Pretty sure you were playing FEAR (Combat) with me and other forum members back then, weren't you? That's the game that got me into multiplayer gaming lol.

Oh how the tides turn, you guys are all MY mentors now. I feel like one of them old farts half the time, and I'm not even that old yet lol. Glad to hear we've got everyone up and running solid now. We may not have the strongest variety of equipment folding, but we're going to give it our alls dammit! Is there an old fart emoji? I STILL haven't even looked at the prize list BWG was trying to persuade me in with. I'm not in it to win it, I'm in it to help E and the site. If we win prizes in the process, well, that'll be pretty cool. New hardware is always welcomed around here.

Even more rare, the seller just told me the board's entire history from when it was new. I'll share if he gives me permission to quote him. Apparently the caps are still so good on it because its only got about ~100 hours or so on it.

Correct it is. I have a VM going on my rack server system (that was running already anyway). I RDP into that. That VM is already RDP'ed into my folding system, and I just leave that RDP session open 24/7. Seems its been working fine since I set it up that way. TY for the suggestion by the way.

Mannn......I'm excited honestly. I'm getting more excited with this old junk than I did building my Ryzen rig. Putting a game in by CD or DVD (or floppy even), putting main executables on the hard drive and the rest runs off media. ZIP drives, DOS commands, tweaking the game so it works correctly on the machine you're using, overclocking by jumpers!!!!!

I really need to put ebay on a block list somehow This was just ordered now too. My junk is getting older and older! Perfect setup though for that gorgeous Antec Performance II case (Chieftec Dragon).

Woot woot!!! Finally got my box to stay online AND folding leaving an RDP connection open to it off my server. So should be smooth sailing from here.

Thank you for your prayers..... No sacrifices needed, I think I've done enough already the last few months. If I get this functioning 290x, my FX build will be complete and I can share that one next. I've got some even older goodies on the way too. Its only been GPU's, especially usable ones for today's stuff, that seems to be the problem getting in working. I know, I know, you've all seen FX builds before. I've never had one perfectly suited for its time period though.