MRG
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- Joined
- Mar 24, 2007
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Greetings all,
Being as I never seem to get lucky or "catch a break" when it comes to getting free goodies, the fact that I got some free hardware today, came as a very nice surprise. A few months ago, a coworker of mine, asked me to make him a budget PC, which I did. ( I believe I posted about it here at the time ) Well today at work, he brought the tower in, telling me that his monitor would not turn on. I told him that I would take a look at it tonight & would let him know what I found out tomorrow at work.
This is what he told me.
"Nah. I ended up never using it & I bought my daughter a laptop, which she is always using instead. Do what you like with it. If you can fix it great, if not throw it away."
WTF!!
So once I get home from work, I take a look at the system & after about 15 minutes, I discover the PCI-e slot somehow was fried & thus was dead. To make sure I tried 3 other cards & none of them worked. I tried the onboard video & it worked just fine. I tried an old PCI card I had & it too worked just fine. I tried flashing the Bios on the motherboard & that had no noticeable effect. The PCI-e slot was just simply dead, while the rest of the PC worked just fine.
So I ended up getting for free:
1) AMD Athlon X2 7750 Black Edition CPU @ 2.7GHz
2) Sapphire 8600 GT PCIe video card w/256mb ( Same exact card I put in my daughters PC. I think it's SLI-Time )
3) 2GB DDR2-800 RAM
4) 250GB SATAII HDD
5) Lite-ON CD/DVD DL Burner
6) 17' Flat screen LCD + Keyboard + Mouse.
While it's far from being the best hardware on the market, it's still came as a very nice surprise.
Now all I need to do is look for a decent AM2 motherboard that allows "Advanced Clock Calibration" in the Bios so that I can unlock the 2 other cores that are already on the die & just disabled.
Anyone have any good advice on a quality, though sadly lower cost AM2 motherboard?
-MRG
Being as I never seem to get lucky or "catch a break" when it comes to getting free goodies, the fact that I got some free hardware today, came as a very nice surprise. A few months ago, a coworker of mine, asked me to make him a budget PC, which I did. ( I believe I posted about it here at the time ) Well today at work, he brought the tower in, telling me that his monitor would not turn on. I told him that I would take a look at it tonight & would let him know what I found out tomorrow at work.
This is what he told me.
"Nah. I ended up never using it & I bought my daughter a laptop, which she is always using instead. Do what you like with it. If you can fix it great, if not throw it away."
WTF!!
So once I get home from work, I take a look at the system & after about 15 minutes, I discover the PCI-e slot somehow was fried & thus was dead. To make sure I tried 3 other cards & none of them worked. I tried the onboard video & it worked just fine. I tried an old PCI card I had & it too worked just fine. I tried flashing the Bios on the motherboard & that had no noticeable effect. The PCI-e slot was just simply dead, while the rest of the PC worked just fine.
So I ended up getting for free:
1) AMD Athlon X2 7750 Black Edition CPU @ 2.7GHz
2) Sapphire 8600 GT PCIe video card w/256mb ( Same exact card I put in my daughters PC. I think it's SLI-Time )
3) 2GB DDR2-800 RAM
4) 250GB SATAII HDD
5) Lite-ON CD/DVD DL Burner
6) 17' Flat screen LCD + Keyboard + Mouse.
While it's far from being the best hardware on the market, it's still came as a very nice surprise.
Now all I need to do is look for a decent AM2 motherboard that allows "Advanced Clock Calibration" in the Bios so that I can unlock the 2 other cores that are already on the die & just disabled.
Anyone have any good advice on a quality, though sadly lower cost AM2 motherboard?
-MRG
