Bill Anderson wrote:
Paul warned me, but I had all these leftover working parts from the
P9X79 MBO that failed and I hated to see them go to waste and I didn't
want to spend a lot of money building a second new computer, so I bought
a cheap MBO anyway:

https://www.amazon.com/Beyang-Intel-.../dp/B06WWHJHT4

And it works! It works great! Windows 10 runs fast and so do apps and
the onboard ethernet connection works and the audio works and all 32
gigabytes of HDD3 memory work and ... it works! Mostly.

It has three USB 2 connectors on it and two of them work but if you plug
anything into the third one the computer won't boot. (Power up, down,
up, down...) As best I can tell, the fix is not to plug anything into
it. Simple!

The HDD activity LED on the front of the case won't work at all if you
turn the plug one way, and if you reverse it the LED just stays on
constantly. As best I can tell, the fix is not to look at the LED.
Simple!

And who cares that instead of a manual you get three Xeroxed sheets with
a handwritten serial number and diagrams and instructions that sorta
almost correspond to the actual motherboard? And a CD containing what
may be drivers but it's hard to tell because the file names are in
Chinese? I mean, who needs more than that anyway?

But...

Paul warned me about high temperatures on cheap MBOs from China, but
still I have to admit I was nonplussed when Aida reported the
temperature of the motherboard was 119 degrees Celsius. Did Aida mean
Farenheit, maybe? Nope, Celsius. At least the processor temps hover
around 40 degrees C. That's nice. Wonder what will happen if I ever
ask the computer to, you know, do some work? I wonder.

The good news is that I can't smell anything burning. The bad news is
that I believe this thing can't last long. Fortunately I don't need it
for anything -- I built it just for the fun of it. And now all those
extra parts I have had lying around have a new home, installed on a
cheap motherboard inside a very nice old Lian Li case, unused, on a
shelf in my storage closet, awaiting the day an emergency strikes and I
need to use a computer in which I have no faith.

So Paul, did I mention you warned me?


Did you stick your finger on the VCore heatsink next to the
CPU socket ? That's the part I got burned on, on my build.
I don't like VCore to run hot (the old designs could
go into thermal runaway, these probably can't). Still,
a traditionalist expects VCore to be properly cooled.
Mine was configured to Turbo, and had cores locked or
something, which made the problem worse when testing
with Prime95 Torture Test. I had to make a few adjustments
to try to keep the temperature of VCore down a bit.

Paul