Yes, GameServer-1 is still running, and I use it for miscellaneous office tasks. I've bought a bunch of parts for it, and the incremental upgrades I've performed over the last year will be supplemented with a host of new parts to further improve on the server.
Previous upgrades:
- The CPU cooler was replaced with a reasonably high-capacity cooler that can clearly handle the 95W TDP. I do not know when exactly this upgrade was performed. This cooler is a typical 2005 high-TDP cooler, featuring heat pipes embedded in a copper heatsink with a top intake fan designed to be used with a case side panel fan duct. My case doesn't have that fan duct nor does it have any intake fans, so airflow is atrocious. Idle temperature is 39C and load temperature is 53C; the entire case heats up.
- Sometime in 2018 or so (possibly 18 April 2018), I moved GameServer-1 from Windows 7 to Windows Server 2012R2 upon Windows 7 becoming end-of-life.
- On 14 April 2024, I replaced the Windows Server 2012R2 install on a slow (2.5") 1TB SSHD with Windows 10 on a 500GB Crucial BX500. Performance is pretty miserable as Windows 10 seems to be missing a lot of optimizations for pre-SSSE3 chips. I do plan on shoehorning Windows 11 in when Windows 10 becomes end-of-life.
- Also on 14 April 2024, I finally got GameServer-1 to take 8GB of RAM. The eBay seller had a suspiciously good price, three of eight sticks received were bad, and all of them claimed to be Kingston genuine parts but have the same serial number. I ran both it and the 'new' CPU cooler through Memtest86 and y-cruncher, and they tested good.
New upgrades:
- A new case, at last! The new case is a Fractal Design Pop Air RGB with tempered glass side panel. I selected this case because it has two 5.25" bays (one for CD drive, the other will receive an adapter for the floppy drive) and the side panel screws do not protrude out the side of the case (they would catch on my computer tray and crack the glass). This case integrates its own RGB controller, so I don't have to do all the hard work installing one myself, and it includes three RGB 120mm fans (two intake, one exhaust; I'll finally be running this computer positive pressure as well). And at $65 shipped, I can't complain!
- Wi-Fi 5, because I have it on hand. It'll also make the computer more sensible for LAN parties.
- I wanted all the front panel connectors to work, but I only have USB 2.0 headers and I needed USB 3.1 and 3.0 headers for the case. It was actually cheaper to buy a USB 3.1 PCIe card with headers ($17) than it was to buy adapters for USB 3.1/3.0 to USB 2.0 header ($19). I will not attain 5 Gbps due to PCIe bottlenecking; I only have northbridge-attached PCIe 1.0.
- Last but not least for this spending round, a RGB-equipped CPU cooler. This is an IceSLEET G4 Midnight Limited Edition, which is a big, vertical air cooler painted black and given an ARGB fan that I can integrate with my case. I grabbed a very cheap ARGB extension cable off of Amazon to deal with any issues with cable reach, as I can't plug this into my motherboard.
Some careful planning happened during parts selection. Most importantly, I needed efficient airflow as the Pentium D doesn't really have a deep low-power mode. The case fans on the Pop Air are 3-pin daisy-chain, and I only have a single 3-pin system fan connector on the motherboard. I could have used the 4-pin side panel fan connector if I really wanted to, but it's tucked away between PCI slots and I didn't want to have such a plainly visible extension cable. I kept the existing PSU, despite its age, as good PSUs are expensive and the one in it is already 80 Plus (Bronze). Again due to the high CPU idle power draw, it would benefit greatly from 80 Plus Platinum or Titanium, but I am not spending that kind of money on this project.
The Pentium D Extreme Edition 900-series is quite hard to find; I assume collectors have pinched the market. Those that do sell (about one every two months on eBay) are well in excess of $100. Thus, I will either remain on the Pentium D 945 or purchase the 950.
A new case will free up the old case for GameServer-0, which is living life in a bag while I procrastinate on replacing failed capacitors.
The re-build is planned for Saturday, 24 August 2024, and we're all looking forward to hot-rodding some BosaikNet heritage! Photos will be posted upon completion.
An interesting observation or two about the motherboard:
- Upon upgrading to Windows 10, my 8GB RAM setup failed to reboot on its own. The computer could boot and shut down properly, but it would hang in POST at a black screen upon rebooting. I found an Intel note on the D955XBK and D975XBX BIOS changelog that stated that Windows fails to reboot when more than 4GB of RAM is installed, and that this issue is fixed in version 1784. I had version 2043, so I didn't think BIOS version was an issue. I updated anyways using a CD burned with 2049 (BK2049P.ISO from HelpDrivers.com, SHA-256 bebd54e2a3b4f5e1240563cf5dffa9ca2b133aa4a01e8fd3d4df085ee602bb20), and my problems went away! I do not know what exactly was the trigger given that nothing in the BIOS changelog appeared relevant to my system, but I am glad that it was fixed by Intel back in 2007 (around when Vista 64 began taking over the computer market). Had it not been fixable, I would have probably moved to the Intel D975XBX2 motherboard and eaten the $50 loss.
- The motherboard temperature sensors are absent on 64-bit Windows, and this is (as far as I can tell) due to an Intel driver EBIOS32.sys being a strictly 32-bit driver. The driver identifies itself as "Intel SMI Kernel Driver"; SMI is System Management Interrupt. This seems to be the only driver that refuses to load on Windows 10. Fortunately, HWiNFO can read the onboard temperature sensors while HWMonitor and OpenHardwareMonitor cannot. The actual sensor interface is a Texas Instruments LM96000 attached to SMBus.
