Due to the price of DDR4 RAM now dropping well below that of DDR3 RAM I’m in the process of slowly building a 1151 build, but on a very, very limited budget. The point of it is likely to be for a family PC & storage server, unless I can get the parts to outstrip my current ITX build.
I’ve said previously I’m not afraid to take a punt on fixing 2nd hand equipment (up to a certain level - more on that later). So Trainsmash & I are undertaking purchasing cheap repairable motherboards on eBay with the thought to try to tinker & fix with hopefully the view to either on sell or use in our own 1151 builds. Any dud motherboards can either be kept for our kids to experiment with or sold here in New Zealand as non working to recoup some of the cost.
In order to do this we obviously need to have the necessary components to ensure we could bench the board to troubleshoot & work out errors.
In this manner I pulled out my FSP Raider 550W PSU (has the 8Pin EPS connector so good for Z series motherboards)
I purchased locally a 2x4GB pack of Adata XPG RAM for $59NZD (~$42 USD) - allows the ability to check dual memory slots & some OC ability.
Trainsmash purchased a Celeron G3920 for $76.50 NZD (~$54.50 USD) incl shipping to NZ, cheap CPU & comes with iGPU so you can diagnose PCI issues with discrete GPUs.
So the motherboard I took a punt on is:
The things going for it are - no bent pins, an undiagnosed fault that prevents boot up, a USB BIOS Flash bility ,a removable/swappable bios chip & generally decent mobo specs(the Asus brown & gold series is the lowest tier of their Z’s). I purchased it for $30USD with free shipping to a my US freight forwarding address which then cost me $26.50NZD(~19USD) to ship here to the arse end of nowhere.
It took about 3 weeks from purchase to get to me, but it allowed time for me to find the RAM & the CPU to come in.
Apologies for the poor quality photo’s that follow.
So after being kicked off my PC on Friday night I commandeered the lounge & built up the motherboard with the CPU & stock cooler (replaced the Intel TIM with Noctua NT-H1) and a single stick of RAM and a Chassis fan installed for diagnostic purposes. I should not I cleared the CMOS fully by pulling the battery (and checking its voltage) and shorting the jumpers.
What happened next was a pleasant surprise:
I was able to get the motherboard to POST with a single RAM module in each of the slots and in also any combination of 2 of the 4 slots. I also managed to get it through to BIOS with and without an external GPU (my XFX HD6950).
So it seems I’ve managed to hit the jackpot & get hold of a Z-series mATX motherboard for $50USD. Not sure what the seller’s issue was, but I’m more than happy.
Next procedure will be to install an OS - probably on a retrieved 2.5" laptop drive as that’s all I have spare XD and make sure it works properly.
So this motherboard may or may not be used as the base for my very budget 1151 build, the only thing holding me back currently is the form factor - would prefer to make a full ATX build as opposed to mATX.
I have a chassis possibly lined up & will use the Noctua cooler I won through EnosTech.
I will be purchasing a new PSU, new SSD for OS & storage drives. Will also source a CPU - likely an i3 to start & wait for the eventual upgrade. Additionally I will purchase DDR4 at bargain basement price for this too.
The current CPU & RAM will be kept as sacrificial components for future troubleshooting/fixing.