[SOLVED] need some help upgradeing dual pentium 3 ibm server

[lolo4dee]

first off yes i know pentium 3 is old and outdated and basically unusable in modern day task, i just wanted to upgrade a old dual pentium3 server for the fun of it. anyways the pc im trying to upgrade is a IBM xseries 220, it has dual pentium 3s and 256mb ram.

first off i want to try to upgrade the cpus in this system, what are the best cpus this server supports? and can i find them on ebay cheap?

next i want to try and upgrade ram, but i have no idea what kind it uses i do know however it supports a maximum of 4 gb's, any idea what kind of ram it uses?

ok now i have some questions about upgrading storage, i was thinking of getting one of these: (link didnt work but its a pci to 4 port sata controll adapter card)
so that i could fit a couple of sata drives in it, can it use a sata ssd if i get this card? and if so would the ssd be bottlenecked by pci?

and lastly whats a good pci gpu i can get for this? are there any i can run in sli? (yes i know sli sucks but why not? it would be fun to try it)

if it helps i plan on running either windows xp or 7 on this.

thanks in advance with any help.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

That server likely uses pc133 sdram. If it has 4 ram slots you can buy 4 1gb sticks. As far as cpu upgrades you are likely out of luck. That pci to sata should work. Make sure it is a sata 3 controller and you should get full speed out of your ssd. You should be able to get windows 7 running but the system will be very slow even with a ram upgrade because of the video chip from the 90s will strugle to run the aero theme. To solve this i would suggest an older pci video card with windows 7 driver support. A youtuber (maybe AAA computers and tech) has an ongoing build with an ibm dual pentium 3 server build. Id look it up. Most of the info im sourcing comes from that.

 

[lolo4dee]

That server likely uses pc133 sdram. If it has 4 ram slots you can buy 4 1gb sticks. As far as cpu upgrades you are likely out of luck. That pci to sata should work. Make sure it is a sata 3 controller and you should get full speed out of your ssd. You should be able to get windows 7 running but the system will be very slow even with a ram upgrade because of the video chip from the 90s trying to run the aero theme. To solve this i would suggest an older pci video card with windows 7 driver support.

why would i be out of luck with cpu upgrades? i know the cpus are not soldered. also could you reccomend me a specific pci gpu, i dont know much about those and i cant ever seem to find any if i just search up "pci gpu" on ebay.

 

[jankerson]

P3 1.4 GHz is the max CPUs.

RAM you be PC 133 (ECC)
DIMM 168-pin
MAX 1GB ram sticks.

As far as PCI GPU's good luck finding one that you can play games on these days. The only one I can think of would be the Voodoo 2 and you would pay a fortune for that if you could actually find one now that works. Maybe a Voodoo 3, same story though.

Any games that are even remotely new would be out of the question.

If it had an AGP slot maybe, but it doesn't so.

 

[USAFRet]

http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?infotype=AN&subtype=CA&htmlfid=897/ENUS102-039

1. The CPUs that are in there are all it will take. 1.4GHz is the top of the PIII line.

2. You need 133MHz ECC RAM

3. An SSD would be a complete waste

4. You can't SLI anything with that

 

[lolo4dee]

P3 1.4 GHz is the max CPUs.

RAM you be PC 133 (ECC)
DIMM 168-pin
MAX 1GB ram sticks.

As far as PCI GPU's good luck finding one that you can play games on these days.

Any games that are even remotely new would be out of the question.

If it had an AGP slot maybe, but it doesn't so.

ok so cpu and storage is solved. are their any sli capable pci gpu's? i know its not very pracitcal, but i think it would be fun to work with as i have never used sli before.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Gaming from the early 2000s like fable tlc, simcity 2000, and dos games will work with the correct os and a good pci videp card

 

[lolo4dee]

http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?infotype=AN&subtype=CA&htmlfid=897/ENUS102-039

1. The CPUs that are in there are all it will take. 1.4GHz is the top of the PIII line.

2. You need 133MHz ECC RAM

3. An SSD would be a complete waste

4. You can't SLI anything with that

im aware an ssd would be a waste but i want to upgrade this server as much as possible so value isnt a concern. why cant i sli? is the bios not capable?

 

[USAFRet]

im aware an ssd would be a waste but i want to upgrade this server as much as possible so value isnt a concern. why cant i sli? is the bios not capable?

The motherboard does not speak SLI.
It is a completely foreign concept.

And there are no BIOS upgrades to make it do that.

 

[jankerson]

P3 1.4 GHz is the max CPUs.

RAM you be PC 133 (ECC)
DIMM 168-pin
MAX 1GB ram sticks.

As far as PCI GPU's good luck finding one that you can play games on these days.

Any games that are even remotely new would be out of the question.

If it had an AGP slot maybe, but it doesn't so.

ok so cpu and storage is solved. are their any sli capable pci gpu's? i know its not very pracitcal, but i think it would be fun to work with as i have never used sli before.

The ONLY PCI GPU that was SLI was the Voodoo 2 back in the day, good luck finding those that still work and or having to cut off your arm to buy them.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Diamond-Monster-3D-II-3dfx-Voodoo2-graphics-card-12MB-PCI-/141181555167

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Not sure if these can sli but they will run team fortress and half life

 

[jankerson]

Not sure if these can sli but they will run team fortress and half life

They connect together using the cables to run as one.

I had them back in the day.

Drivers might be an issue though.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/EVGA-256-P1-N399-LX-e-GeForce-6200-256MB-DDR2-PCI-Graphics-Card-New-In-Open-Box/123607974645?epid=73825621&hash=item1cc79c02f5:g:ip8AAOSw55FcPnzq try one of these. This one is pci and completely overkill for that system with a whopping 4 cuda cores at 300mhz and 256mb of ddr2 vram at 500mhz. No need for sli lol. There is a agp and pci version. You may want to go with agp if your motherboard supports that (likely)

 

[NightHawkRMX]

An agp version may be better.

 

[jankerson]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/EVGA-256-P1-N399-LX-e-GeForce-6200-256MB-DDR2-PCI-Graphics-Card-New-In-Open-Box/123607974645?epid=73825621&hash=item1cc79c02f5:g:ip8AAOSw55FcPnzq try one of these. This one is pci and completely overkill for that system with a whopping 4 cuda cores at 300mhz and 256mb of ddr2 vram at 500mhz. No need for sli lol. There is a agp and pci version. You may want to go with agp if your motherboard supports that (likely)

That MB is PCI only.

No AGP slot.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Well then a pci version of the 6200 should work. An old vodoo 3 card may work if they came in pci varieties.

 

[jankerson]

Well then a pci version of the 6200 should work. An old vodoo 3 card may work if they came in pci varieties.

Yeah, they did if he can find one in PCI.

The 6200 was pretty bad.

If he could find a Radeon 9700 or Pro PCI that would be the ticket.

 

[jankerson]

I found a few Voodoo Banshee PCI cards on EBAY.

They were pretty good really.

 

[jankerson]

Found a VOODOO 3 PCI card.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/3dfx-Voodoo3-3000-PCI-Video-Card-with-Box-and-CD-working/264165309113?epid=1625537136&hash=item3d817abab9:g:9hcAAOSwuytcTLK5:rk:1f:0

 

[NightHawkRMX]

If you are willing to spend that i would get it. It works from the pics.