MX Linux Forum

A member of the MX team (who wishes to remain anonymous) sent me a goodie box of their gently-used surplus computer components left over from a previous build of theirs which has since been upgraded, plus some things from their storeroom. Christmas came early this year! (Actually not as the Christmas season begins on September 1 in the Phils and I got the box this month.) But here's what was inside:

• An Asus M5A78LM LX Plus motherboard.

• A CPU that was originally thought to be an AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz septacore, but that's not what it actually is and it will have to be a surprise. Maybe it's an octacore? (It's definitely not a Ryzen as those are AMD4 socket CPUs and this is an AM3+ socket board. I'm guessing it's probably still an FX. I'll just have to wait and see. It and the cooler are already installed and I don't want to mess with them and muck up the thermal grease application.)

• A stock AMD FX low-profile CPU cooler that has an 8cm fan and copper heat pipes, previously used on a server and which kept its CPU nice and cool.

• Two Crucial 8GB DDR3-1600 ECC DIMMs.

• An XFX Radeon HD-6570 video card.

• Two nice 12cm and two 8cm case fans.

• Thermal grease, assorted cables and connectors, and a small bag of machine screws.

• One 128GB SSD and one 120GB SSD.

• Probably some other stuff that I'm missing here.

Yay! Everything I need to build a nice desktop except a case, PSU and maybe a few little odds and ends!

Most Excellent!

Merry Christmas!

What a lovely thing for them to have done.

Chris

sweet

i got an empty case

I agree, Chris. I was totally wowed!

junoluna wrote: Mon Nov 18, 2019 3:40 am sweet

i got an empty case

haha! That reminds me of the kid in Charlie Brown when they all went trick-or-treating together:

Wow.. congrats :D I hope to see your build being mentioned here sometime

NICE!!! Rock on...

I've already ordered a new case, a Raidmax Helium that can hold up to 5 disks and 6 fans. Also a second magnetic dust filter (I already have one) so all of my intake fans will be filtered. Hopefully they'll both arrive sometime this month.

I have a 120GB SSD and a 1TB HDD from my old desktop, both of which are fairly new, and a never-used generic 585W average/750W peak PSU to put in it. I also have a 12cm and an 8cm case fan from the old desktop I can add.

I'll try to take a picture of the finished build, but no guarantees about photo quality as I'm a lousy photographer.

We don't care about the quality of the pics...the hardware crazies among us just like looking at the nuts and bolts...

I can take a picture of the bag of machine screws for ya, Paul. :)

I would love that..

My new case arrived this morning. Pictures taken this afternoon when I finally had time to unbox it. I haven't taken the side panels off and looked inside yet, just peeped through the PSU opening on the back. Sorry about the washout from the sunlight. I'll try to take better ones sometime. I was kind of in a hurry as I had to go somewhere. (The towel it's sitting on is my cat Butch's bed.)






The dust filter is shipping from China and is delayed due to a severe tropical storm followed by a typhoon in the northern Luzon Island area that's affecting flights in and out of Manila.
https://weatherph.org/wp-content/upload ... 2_Loop.gif
No flights are going to get through that! And there's another one following it too: https://weatherph.org/weatherphilippine ... r-20-2019/
So the filter's going to be delayed around a week. No great hurry though.

Pics of nuts and bolts as requested:

Case side showing two 12cm fan grills. I'll have to find a way to cover the lower one as I plan to mount an exhaust fan up above it and want to make sure exhaust air gets blown out by the fans and that dust doesn't get inside through it. I'm planning to cut a piece of plastic to the same size as a 12cm fan, drill holes for screws, paint it black then screw it into place if the plastic will hold the screws. Otherwise it will have to be black gorilla tape, I guess.


Case front.


There's a slight dent near the top of the back-of-the-motherboard side of the case. I kind of pounded it out a bit so now there's just a small dimple. I'll see if I can find a small hammer and a couple of scraps of wood to do a better job, but I'm not going to return the case for this and have to wait another month. It's OK if i can't make it look perfect: that's how I'll know that it's my computer.


Case floor. I was hoping there would be another fan grill at the front.






Front of case with the panel removed showing two 12cm fan grills.


Rear of front panel showing wiring and a little bag containing screws, extra thumbscrews for the case sides, and three small zip ties that were included,


Front of panel. The two red LEDs for power and HDD activity mount behind that amber plastic strip and shine through it. I guess they'll probably look orange? Brown?


The screws and things that came with the case.


Video card.


Motherboard.


CPU cooler.


RAM


RAM


PSU. I bought this thinking the PSU on my old PC had died but it turned out to be the motherboard, so this PSU has never actually been used. I'd like to get an 80+ bronze or higher rated one, possibly modular, but that will have to be later. Meanwhile this is OK. It can run 585W continuously and per a wattage calculator the computer will only draw around 286W under load, so I'm close to the top of the efficiency curve at close to 50% power utilization, though probably a bit less efficient when I'm not loading it down very much.


Back of PSU. 8cm rear fan.


SSDs. The Gigabyte is from my old desktop. I bought it earlier this year.


1TB 3.5" HDD from my old computer, bought new in 2017.


Three 12cm case fans. I already had the top one.


Three 8cm case fans. I already had the middle one.


Zip ties, the Noctua thermal grease I was given, and the rear panel piece for the motherboard/case that goes around all of the rear sockets and connectors.


Assorted power cables and screws.


Two heavy-duty power cables and a splitter. Some are molex to molex, some molex to SATA.


Looks like a couple of SATA data cables.


Some SATA data cables I already had.


12cm by 24cm dust filter with magnetic edges that I bought for the old PC.


Two 2.5" to 3.5" drive adapters, for mounting two SSDs in the 3.5" drive bays. I already had these.

I'll have to wait and see but I think I'm going to need to order a packet of case fan screws, and possibly some molex power extensions or splitters. I won't know for sure if I need the latter until I start the build and start routing the cables, and when I unpackage all of my swag and see what I already have. I may need a couple of case fan 3 or 4 pin power connector to molex adapters too. We'll see.

nightmare

would take me at least 3 months to put that lot together then it would explode on me

last christmas, i failed to help my daughter build a lego rapunzel castle ... was proper hard

The hard parts for me will be screwing the motherboard in place and attaching the front panel connectors to the tiny pins for the power and reset buttons and the two LEDs and headphone/mic jacks. I don't see as well as I used to. But I'll do it somehow. Everything else will be fairly easy.

Indeed.. building isn't too hard. :) Just make sure you don't get the shield tabs (those little sticking out doohickeys next to the holes) into any connectors on the mobo like I did


Looking good there JayM!

My second dust filter finally made it to the Phils. It may be delivered sometime this weekend, or Monday. Unless when doing the build I find that I'm lacking any screws or cables I should then have everything I need to put this system together.

(Of course I probably won't have time until after SWMBO leaves as we have a lot of other things to take care of while she's here.)

My fan filter was delivered lat night at around 6:30PM. I have almost everything I need.

I found a plastic cracker (biscuit) box and traced around a 12cm fan on its lid and cut it out with an Xacto knife. I have to get a can of flat black acrylic spray paint and paint it then drill holes for the screws. This will be used to block the unused fan grill on the side of my case and keep dust out, and also (so I've read) make cooling more efficient as all of the hot air in the case will be exhausted by my two exhaust fans rather than just letting it escape on its own and helping to create positive pressure in the case as I plan to install three intake fans.

I may have to do another hardware store run (it's just up the street, maybe a city block away) for screws for the case fans. If they don't have black ones I'll need to paint their heads too. All that has to wait until after next Wednesday (payday) which is also when the Mrs. is heading back to work. Things should hopefully be calmer and less busy here after that so I can concentrate on building the computer. Hopefully next weekend, unless people start setting off premature firecrackers (Christmas is near) and scaring our dogs. :( Then I'd be too busy dealing with calming them down. Too many interruptions and distractions.

I found a couple of scrap pieces wood to aid in smoothing out that little dent too.

Paul.. wrote: Mon Nov 18, 2019 7:28 am We don't care about the quality of the pics...the hardware crazies among us just like looking at the nuts and bolts...

I’d prefer an action shot.... something like a fan spinning lol.

Very nice Jay... very nice. Looks like a ton of fun.

SwampRabbit wrote: Fri Nov 22, 2019 1:26 am

Paul.. wrote: Mon Nov 18, 2019 7:28 am We don't care about the quality of the pics...the hardware crazies among us just like looking at the nuts and bolts...

I’d prefer an action shot.... something like a fan spinning lol.

Very nice Jay... very nice. Looks like a ton of fun.

All of my pics are action shots if you count shutter-shake.

BTW I got the dent straightened out this afternoon, as good as I can make it. I can still see it because I know it's there (and where) but I don't think anyone else will be able to.

dent work...like an auto body shop..NICE!

JayM wrote: Fri Nov 22, 2019 1:53 am

SwampRabbit wrote: Fri Nov 22, 2019 1:26 am I’d prefer an action shot.... something like a fan spinning lol.

Very nice Jay... very nice. Looks like a ton of fun.

All of my pics are action shots if you count shutter-shake.

BTW I got the dent straightened out this afternoon, as good as I can make it. I can still see it because I know it's there (and where) but I don't think anyone else will be able to.

Lol very true I guess

JayM wrote:

All of my pics are action shots if you count shutter-shake.

Use a flash. It will freeze action every time and its a boon for those of us with shaky hands.

Don't you love threads like this!
I certainly do.
The excitement is building!