AI Disclosure:
Internet search has been thoroughly degraded over the years so I will use AI to find answers. I can’t think of other use at the moment - will update if that changes.
Hello all, fist time poster here.
I don’t have any homelab systems running right now so I’ve been looking to build a linux box to play around. Last year I was waiting for component prices to go down aaand theeeen the PC parts apocalypse happened… 
The goal here is to cobble together a box and run stuff on it. What stuff? Don’t know yet, will figure out. Local AI would be cool but totally out of budget.
What box? There is a side effect of the apocalypse - old hardware is surfacing in my local second-hand market. Stuff that wasn’t here before. Old, odd hardware:
This is BTC79X5 V1.0 board:
- Manufacturer: unknown, probably part of some kind of server chip salvage operation in China
- Format: unknown, the holes don’t align???
- Socket: LGA2011
- Cooler: needed
- Cores: not matter what CPU you install, you only get one
- RAM slots: a grand total of one, the gods are gracious
- PCIe slots: a grand total of five PCIE3.0 x8 electrical slots
- Storage: mSATA (not m.2!) + single SATA port, not sure if both work or if it is the same port just multiplexed
- Power: Takes 3x GPU 6pin to boot, turns on as soon as it gets power, lacks “normal” connectors
- Fan headers: the headers say no to the standard 3pin for fans, the plastic latches don’t align???
- Bonuses: it came with Ivy Bridge E5-2650L and 8GB of DDR3 RAM
So, an old mining board that provides us with five reasonable x8 slots instead on these little x1 electrical that other mining boards usually have. Not much other expansion. This is what I’m going to build around and it’s going to be a bargain-bin build. First order of business is trying to turn on the thing and doing something about the one-core limit. These PCIe slots can’t be very useful with only a single core. Fortunately this path has been trodden before by others:
You can find modified bios firmware for these on github that claims to unlock cores.
I hooked-up the board to what I had lying around, booted into linux from a USB and flashed the bios and it worked. I’m seeing full 10 cores and 20 threads of the 2650L V2 aaaand I can feel their heat now too.
Parts I’ve had:
- Old Enermax 500W power supply - this thing has to have over 15 years at this point
- Geforce 8600 GT 512MB - welp… its a graphics card! somehow it works under modern linux
- USB drive
- cardboard
Parts I bought:
- BTC79X5 + E5-2650L V2 + 8GB DDR3 ECC combo for 110PLN → ~28USD
- used NH-U12P SE1366 with two Noctua fans for 76PLN → ~19USD
- more cardboard (the above came in boxes)
Next steps/TODOs/Figure-out:
- The Noctua cooler was a steal of a deal, however it includes mounting only for LGA1366. LGA2011 seems to have the same hole spacing, could this just work? Will find out, the CPU can’t be run like this.
- Turning the PSU using a paperclip is unreliable if you plan to ever tough the exposed cables ever so slightly. A proper “turn-on plug” is needed.
- One of the 6pins is powered using a molex adapter that is falling apart, like physically one of the pins is sliding out of a connector housing. Better to get new adapter.
- Moar RAM during the RAM apocalypse? 8GB is a little low, we only have one slot but DDR3 RDIMM seems still relatively affordable even at higher capacity so hmm…
- Storage: yeah so I should have a 256GB SATA SSD from a broken laptop somewhere that I need to find and then we will have storage. Sort of. Or maybe this thing can boot NVMe?
- I should have an old network card somewhere, maybe this could be a virtualization server with more RAM and more eth ports? Or a router? It would be high on the power bill if it was to be a router.
- How do I mount this thing? There is no case for this. I can’t have a case-less box.
I’ve been building my PCs and dabbled into Linux before so this is not entirely new territory. Should be fun.