so the weather's beautiful and we're finally back to our traditional outdoor
unboxing location you can see it's bright and sunny in Vancouver today I'm
going to be doing a retro unboxing I'm going to be doing the Athlon 64 FX 51 I
actually found a brand new sealed FX 51
to give you some idea how old this is
check this out oh yeah there's some dust
for you and I think the back of it is even worse
can you you can see the dust buildup you can like write in it it's disgusting and
we should probably get this in the light to make sure that the we're recording this with the minow HD which I already
unboxed just to have a look at the HD recording quality of it okay so the FX
51 is a socket 940 processor but not the
940 that we know today socket am3 it's the socket 940 that existed at the same
time as socket 7 754 so back when the Athlon 64 was first
released it was released on two sockets 754 and 940 which was actually an
opteron server socket so the FX 51 is I
believe the only Athlon processor to have ever been released on socket 940 it
is a single core and you know what
without getting too much further into this why don't we break the seal on this
baby so let me see how we can get this open AMD hasn't used pack packaging like
this in years and I hardly even remember
how to open these I think there's like there's some kind of a trick to it but
since I don't really care and I'm just unboxing it why don't we just go ahead
and slice it open make things simple on ourselves okay so here we
go this is back like this is like a
dinosaur heat pipes didn't even like exist back then so you can see that this
cooler is just like a thin cooler we're going to get this out and have a look so
inside it's all nice and shiny and new
this is a brand new processor sort of so let's have a look at the heat syn first
this is the Athlon 64 FX 51 heat sink it
has a huge copper base like this thing
is heavy that is one solid slab of
copper all the way around the bottom of it it has a densely packed fin heat sink
for optimal heat dissipation remember this processor does feature a dual
Channel ddr1 memory controller for
state-ofthe-art Ultra hyper fastness
okay it has a three- pin fan connector all right most uh most heat sinks these
days included with CPUs now have four pin pwm fan connectors AMD actually
still does use this latching mechanism although it's been updated a little bit
since then so you use the clip ARM on one side and then you uh you push this
down and then use this clip to attach uh like it looks a little different but
it's the same basic idea the bottom is not lapped at all so I'm doing my
obligatory finger reflection shot even in the bright Sun that is not a very
smooth base so uh the the manufacturing processes for those were a little bit
different back then as well let's see what else we've got in here so I okay we
wow the CPU actually comes with like a a
motherboard bracket it would appear so I'm guessing that the reason for that is
that the only motherboard that supported this chip back in the day would have
been um server opon motherboards so you
have to put an athlon64 bracket on there
so there you have it that's a socket 939 back plate the only difference between
939 and am2 and am3 in terms of the back
plate is that 939 had two through holes and am X like all the am sockets have
four so they have 1 2 3 4 so that's a little bit different but this layout is
actually very much the same they've gotten rid of this fourth clip at this
point so it includes a couple screws there let's see what else we've got all
right wow lots of documentation for a processor here we
go all right so why don't we see okay so
first of all it comes with a three-year limited warranty which is long up at
this point that's not even relevant oh let's see what the date on this is so
2003 Advanced Micro Devices nice so it's
been quite a while since this is has been on the market oh then we've got
like a big wow this is going to be really big okay I can I can already tell
congratulations on your purchase of the
new AMD aflon 64 FX pib processor in a
box the best solution uh for to ensure full compliance with AMD's limited
warranty the heat sink and fan assembly included with the processor must be used
so just in case the warranty was valid then you know there you go you have to
use it okay P there we go so they give you
full instructions in a poster size on
how to install this processor and holding up this white piece of paper is
very bright uh they give us so place the
back plate gently lift the motherboard edges over the back plate push down the
processor and wow it even goes around to the back step nine step 10 Step 11 this
is a 16-step program apparently that allows you to install
this just look at that it has about eight different languages okay connect
the fan okay so there you go there's the instructions anyway and let me see if I
can sort of figure out how to get this folded back up it's like going to go
away in the wind here if I don't do this
now although I hate doing stuff like this on camera because I realize it's
very boring for you people all right let's see what else we got in here next
we have read this first record the serial number of your processor never
handle the processor with the heat sink fan installed or without it installed
okay that's in a bunch of different languages so these are some warnings on using your processor properly ooh and
then we've got an Athlon FX sticker it's like a metallic sticker it has metal
around the edges and yeah I remember
there was a time when that sticker having that on your case meant you had
like a $1,000 processor in your case where now I think the FX 51 wouldn't be
worth quite so much um
let me see what I can so instant download of a 30-day trial version of
the latest video encoding software cool do you think that would still work I
kind of doubt it oh no there we go offer ends March 31st 2004 nice all right so
now let's have a look at the Athlon 64
FX itself so this is not compatible with
any modern socket whatsoever it's a
940 and it uh wow it's quite a bit
different looking than the current chip so you can see that it actually has like
kind of a a bluish greenish grayish um
PCB under the heat spreader itself and that you can see wow the heat spreader
is like shoddy almost it's not even a straight line around the edges can you
see that on the camera uh it's very hard to say because the minow HD has a pretty
small screen but there's all the printing that's on the heat spreader and
uh at the bottom we find 940 pins but
not in the am2 or am3 configurations this is in the old 940 configuration
anyway thank you for checking out my unboxing more retro unboxing of the AMD
Athlon 64 FX 51