Testing & Teardown of China Faked Pentium 133MHz Socket 7 CPU

[@CPUGalaxy]

Check out my first video about faked CPUs too. Great crime story. 😉 kzbin.info/www/bejne/raSum4tsiqyMi7M

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

Where did you buy this fake Pentium CPU? I want to buy one.

[@CPUGalaxy]

I bought them about 10 years ago on ebay. And they were very rare at that time already. Today its not easy to find one. You just need to keep your eyes open on ebay.

[@Kedvespatikus]

@@CPUGalaxy If the demand rises, those sedulous Chinese worker hands will make new ones.

[@wishusknight3009]

Its interesting when the budget fakes become worth more than the originals.

[@qwertykeyboard5901]

@@wishusknight3009 ikr? Really interesting

[@mudhutproductions]

I always felt a little bad for throwing away or destroying a processor. Such amazing little triumphs of technology.

[@qwertykeyboard5901]

Same. Kinda cringe when these things get destroyed.

[@Firefoxsimp]

isn’t it a fake anyway?

[@mudhutproductions]

@@Firefoxsimp Well, no. The processor itself was fraudulently packaged as something it wasn't but it was a genuine laptop Pentium.

[@arlobubble3748]

I've got most of my old CPUs that aren't in a board laying around somewhere

[@zeuss194]

i use old CPU as key ring ornament

[@NickEter]

The funny thing is that after almost 30 years, chinese sellers still do make weird "custom" CPUs using mobile intel chips

[@theranger775]

diep.io is the funniest

[@jm036]

@@theranger775 stfu bot

[@namaloompakistani1768]

@@jm036 Are they really bots?

[@DigitalViscosity]

I don't have a problem with it, I just wish they would be honest about what they are selling. Stuff getting used and having uses is better than getting thrown away

[@aprintojoss8079]

And maybe they are still do same with current intel i series and amd ryzen today...

[@AndyFletcherX31]

Certainly a lot of work went into repackaging the chip and heatsinking it to the custom lid.

[@AndreiNeacsu]

Actually, this CPU was pretty reliable. Intel sold it at a 100MHz clock to make it fit a specific TDP (and power draw). The higher voltage and clocks might (definitely) only decrease the efficiency, but with desktop-type cooling, the CPU might be fine for a very long time. I'm just sorry that you did not attempt to overclock it at "stock" voltage of 3.1V~3.3V and see if it goes 200MHz. I think that it could, as those chips are downclocked a lot from the factory, for efficient mobile use. I have a desktop P54C 120MHz CPU with an integrated cooler that I ran successfully at 190MHz (2x95) on an ALI Aladdin V+ motherboard for a long time, paired it with all sorts of normal or crazy (for this setup) GPUs like Matrox G200, Rage 128 Ultra, TNT Vanta, Radeon SDR, Geforce 2 MX 400, Geforce FX 5200, etc. Some of the benchmarking I did record, so I can search for it if you are curious. In other unusual tests, I ran a Cyrix MX PR 300 (233MHz real, 66MHz x 3.5) at 250MHz (100MHz x 2.5) for a very significant speed boost and pleasant performance with all of the above cards, making Unreal playable, then Glquake and Quake2 smooth as butter. LE: I see that I already had already uploaded (unlisted) for a friend some Windows XP + Matrox G200 tests with that 120MHz Pentium at 190MHz. Windows XP runs horribly on that setup with that specific motherboard and only 128MB of RAM. In Windows 98, things are significantly better, as for the DOS version of Quake (under real DOS), I remember something like over 40fps in software mode and no screen borders. kzbin.info/www/bejne/fmq2dp1re7mZa5I LE2: Here is some testing with that Cyrix mentioned above in Windows 98 and an S3 Virge DX video card. It shows the various software rendering choices for Quake 1, GLquake1, software Quake 2, OpenGL "accelerated" Quake 2, software Unreal, software Half Life, D3D "accelerated" Half Life. Now, in all honesty, there are quite a few 3D games that work reasonable with the S3 Virge DX, among which you find Tomb Raider 1 and 2, Descent 2, Mechwarrior 2, POD, Croc, and a few others. With the Rage 128 Ultra, the Cyrix MX was OK for quite a lot of games. kzbin.info/www/bejne/gX-ZYZudeceZo6c

[@johannesmichael1379]

Good, old Times....my Celeron 433 ran at 768 MHz (so nearly Double the Speed), Stock cooling, (3DFX at that time) great, stable, cheap Maschine. Overclocking did have huge Impact in Speed these Days...

[@txic.4818]

Didn't know there was a niche for old Intel hardware on youtube

[@paulweston8184]

@@txic.4818 Oh come on Toxic Beats. 😉 There's a niche for everything on youtube. There's even a niche for your mother on here. I found that they have a niche for my mother too. WTF. 😯😔😜😔

[@jamezxh]

I’d really like to see some OG Pentium pro overclocking . I have a few cpus but no MB however

[@jmdjasonday]

My guess, intel had an overstock of the mobile CPU's and they were happy to volume sell to a company that would produce a product that was cheaper. The cheaper chips were sold to consumers who would have purchased a competitors product anyway, so Intel still made money. Any warranty claims are easily turned around, as it is a "Chinese Knockoff".

[@stefan_jank]

Exactly and everybody was happy :D

[@monad_tcp]

probably the biggest customers of that thing are chinese factories, ironically they run very old PCs, it wouldn't be hard to see some Pentiums being used on old PCs, if it pops, just put another in the place and keep it running, as long as there are replacements, why bother trashing the entire machine because the PC part is not upgradeable

[@ardentdrops]

"Very rare and collectible" "Let's cut it apart"

[@cptcrogge]

:(

[@gabrielvieira6529]

Lmao

[@ErraticPT]

They're not actually that rare, but relatively speaking they do fetch more than they're really worth for their curiosity value more than their technological one.

[@adriansdigitalbasement]

Amazing and cool -- thanks for tearing it down so we could find out what it really is. I guess the over-voltage allows for a "stable" overclock -- LOL!

[@CPUGalaxy]

funny, its 2:50 AM here, I cant sleep and watching a video on your channel as I see a popup from youtube you are commenting a video from me 😂😂

[@MasterControl90original]

I believe the mobile die in the end is a binned part that can be run at a lower voltage so "theoretically" it should be totally fine at an higher voltage and frequency

[@bentboybbz]

It seems like all of the great you tubers that I subscribe to also subscribe to each other. Sometimes I will be thinking “hmm I wonder what suggestions this other KZbinr would have ..” then I check the comments and there is already a comment from them. Lol.

[@therealjammit]

For a while you could buy a laptop CPU in a desktop package on purpose. They would sell them as that. As far as the 100mhz instead of a 133mhz, it might be possible that the 100mhz was either the rating for when used in a laptop (thermal issues) or it might have come off the assembly line as being capable of running 133mhz but was binned for 100mhz for cost. As odd as it may seem under rating a CPU was common back then. A manufacturer would use a large "circle" of silicon and dope it to have many individual CPUs on it. Before thew would saw the chips apart they would put them in a jig and test them and see how fast they could go. At first you'd get lucky to find a faster chip among the batch and you would pay more for the fast one. As the manufacturing went on and settings were tweaked to get the best yield, the number of "lucky" chips grew. At a certain point there were more fast chips than slow ones, but people didn't want to spend the money on a fast one. So the manufacturer would take a fast chip from the fast pile, stick it in the package we are all familiar with, and label it as a slower one. Since the manufacturing cost was still the same, it didn't hurt sales if they sold a fast one as a slow one.

[@cantstandya112]

In my cpu collection, I found a counterfeit intel 80486 dx2/66 that had the top ceramic sanded down and re silk screened. It was originally a 80486 dx2/50

[@felixokeefe]

Wasn't the dx2/50 - 66 always the same chip. PCs of the time had a turbo switch so you could switch between the two clocks in the fly. Presumably for software compatibility. I wouldn't put it past Intel to have done this rebranding themselves at the time.

[@phaztheaussiebastard]

@@felixokeefe The turbo button does not do that. it's for backward compatibility with older games that have their speed tied in with the CPU clock speed. it actually SLOWS YOUR PC DOWN, these games were designed to run on a 6mhz 8088, not a 66mhz 80486,

[@felixokeefe]

@@phaztheaussiebastard I could swear I remember it switching between 66Mhz and 50Mhz often displayed on a dual 7 segment LED display on the front of the case. So yes it would slow the PC down from 66 to 50.

[@TheHolyGhost777]

That was the second processor I ever owned. =)

[@gemmajess007]

@@felixokeefe that is one of my 1st computer at school. Like power rangers switch to Turbo hahaha😂😆

[@poprawa]

I think, that xraying before ripping apart is quite something. I love this channel

[@mor4y]

If you ever want to xray something yourself, head to the nearest left-luggage office at a railway station, nearly all of them xray your bag before it gets stored, usually they're quite happy to xray something for you if you pay the charge for a bag to be deposited, and it helps keep their paperwork straight! I think a guy called Major Malfunction did a guide on xray'n chips a few years ago, unfortunately he's dead now, but his excellent chip de-capping security research lives on

[@mor4y]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/rJOse2Cbi7ael9k The major malfunction security talk 😉

[@WaybackTECH]

I feel ya. I wouldn't mind running one of these actually. I enjoy collecting and using unique vintage computer parts.

[@fp6232]

How the hell you have 790 subscribers only??! Your channel has gold premium contents and time spent on it is very entarteining!

[@CPUGalaxy]

Thank you very much! I try my best to create interesting content and best possible video quality with the equipment I have available. Yeah, sometimes I become desperate when you see crapy videos with 100k and more views while investing hours of time into good content with this little subs... Anyhow this topic I am covering in my videos is my passion since teenage time and sometimes I find myself watching my own videos. 😂.. although I hate to hear my own voice. 🤦🏻‍♂️. Thank you for your positive feedback and visiting my channel. BR, Peter

[@fp6232]

@@CPUGalaxy We share teenage passion and the hate for our own voice, reason why I will never shoot or record myself on video... But I like your voice! I like germans who speak clear english, you achieve same result as Marco Reps and the guy from Great Scott channel which I follow I literally love your videos about the mini crts review, really cool!

[@ve2mrxB]

@@CPUGalaxy I am glad you connected with @EEVblog channel! Congratulations for the almost x3 subscriber increase in a few days!

[@SeriousGlitcher]

@@CPUGalaxy this comment aged very well congratulations jumping up to 10k subs now, keep @ it and you'll be at 100 k in no time thank you for your content

[@CPUGalaxy]

Thank you very much. I will keep it up 👍🏻😃

[@Zerbey]

You have to admire the ingenuity that went into creating this fake. I would be intrigued to see how long it would last during a proper burn in test.

[@SkyOctopus1]

Very interesting and a very well produced video! May I suggest if you have to do this sort of thing again, see if you can get access to a mill or even just a dremel? It wouldn't take much to shave a few mm off the bottom of the package so you could leave the lead frame in place unmolested and look at the text from the underside. Alternatively, with a dremel you could just cut a hatch in the bottom since socket 7 doesn't have pins in the centre.

[@andrewstoner4355]

my thoughts are. maybe they worked fine since it had a decent IHS, plenty of TIM. not to mention it was dead bug style which means the IHS was closer to the heat to dissipate it. And maybe the creator discovered it could run it at a higher clock speed with more voltage than designed for because of how it was packaged? if you look at extreme overclocking you can see the same results. you can get a much higher clock with more voltage providing you can dissipate the heat well enough, while at the same time having very little or no degradation. let me know if i may be completely wrong. Awesome videos so far! glad EEVblog linked me to you!

[@gorky_vk]

mobile version from this time are just downclocked undervolted desktop cores, I see no issue in package like this. Yes, it not something to be proud of having in collection but if price is ok and somebody want to build retro PC for games or whatever why not? And we can say "but it's not ok to lie to customers" but who will ever buy one if they describe how it's made? For this one is at least obvious looking from space that it's not original, something that can't be said for CPUs in video before this one which was just plain fakes. I would like to creators of one from last video tell me how on earth something like that can be profitable.

[@BaudBand]

Makes sense, over voltage generally means you can get more clock speed and stay stable with the expense of more heat and shorter life span - which explains the different lid.

[@CPUGalaxy]

🤔 yeah, makes sense. thx for this good input!

[@MKhurramAziz]

I remember a more recent effort by some Chinese sellers to repackage Intel's 7th generation i7 laptop chips into desktop packages and it was for the reason that the mobile chips were cheaper and even after the whole adaptation process the CPU was cheaper than buying the desktop version.

[@vincentschumann937]

yeah but nowadays mobile chips have way worse performance than their desktop counterparts

[@renyn21]

@@vincentschumann937 Not really. It's all about the cooling and what kind of tdp the SKU is supposed to have. Those small 15w chips meant for notebooks, meh no thanks. But the ones actually similar to the desktop chips, the 35-45w parts, they can go far. I have found 6 and 8 core engineering sample laptop chips with desktop socket adaptation and the seller warns that even if they are laptop chips they will get as hot as an 8700k or 9900k when overclocked because it's the same kind of chip just tweaked for lower tdp. Now I have a laptop here, 15.6 regular size, with a freaking tablet cpu, a 6w Celeron that I cannot understand it's purpose, I feel sorry for whoever bought that in 2017, it's as slow as a pentium 4, is meant to run win 10, when anything happens its unusable, otherwise, can barely check email on it.

[@PHEEliNUX]

This actually made me wonder, can you technically use a very fast microcontroller to simulate old CPUs? Like if you had a microcontroller with a program that translates the CPU instructions to the microcontroller, processes them then sends them back as if it were the CPU itself, using a cable that plugs in like it’s part of the socket.

[@typingcat]

Saw a Raspberry Pi Pico emulating an old game machine (forgot what it was) a few days ago, so probably possible. PS: It was "BBC Micro".

[@irrision]

Pretty sure something like this is done on new commodore 64 clones that have come out in the last few years.

[@kevito666]

350nm process on the desktop and 350nm LV process on the mobile? I am thinking this clever hack was not actually very hard on the CPU at all. This is sort of an early 350nm+ process that likely allowed it to get away with running lower voltage, for the purpose of saving battery life, but likely could run at either 2.9V or 3.3V without any reliability problems (only a little more heat than the desktop version). Any way to measure current load on the regulator or power supply between the two chips?

[@CPUGalaxy]

nice Idea to measure this. I think I could unsolder the output pin of the regulator to make a short current loop to measure it. I am curious now. 😃

[@imagekiwi]

Like the heat spreader it was using, lot of surface area. Reminds me of the Pentium Pro heat spreader. ( never had a original Pentium, so uncertain if that's how the originals looked ). The type of metals used could be interesting, could have been extracted from the Pentium Pro heat spreader ( They do sell them in bulk these days for cheap ).

[@wishusknight3009]

Those are the same dye that they used on the desktop based cpu's. These ones are just binned a little higher for the 2.9 volts and low heat. In essence that cpu is not overloaded at 3.3 volts as it was essentailly designed for it. IIRC those are the same stepping which were used on the P200S and late 166's. And you could probably have gotten that to run 200 if its not multiplier locked.

[@TheHungrySlug]

A very nice breakdown of those chips. I even learnt something too. So Here take my sub.

[@mobius1qwe]

Due to the size of the processor and the ammount of heatsink plate around it. I believe they were running the 100MHz in overclocked mode to 133MHz, which is why on the benchmark it shows 132.95MHz of clock. Since there's plenty of plate to cool the thing down, and 33MHz doesn't produce much heat, I hitnk that's the choice they made.

[@MartenElectric]

Quite good you actually manage to overclock it to 133, I remember back in 1996 we mange to sqeeeze our 120 out of 100mhz pentium and stable 110Mhz

[@foley2k2]

In 1996 I could get a packard bell p75 to run stable at 90 and for a few minutes at 100 mhz by overclocking. 30fps at 640x480 Quake with a voodoo rush was fun back then.

[@felixokeefe]

Those first gen Pentiums were pretty bulletproof. I imagine that the mobile parts were actually binned parts from the same line as their desktop brethren. Thus fairly logical that when run at desktop voltages higher clock speeds could be achieved.

[@mikem.9197]

My 233mmx only had a little headroom left in it. Now my Celeron 433A-- that guy ran at 541mhz all day long upping the FSB from 66 to 83mhz as long as the PCI/AGP devices could handle it at 41mhz instead of 33mhz.

[@spyder000069]

I knew a company who's side business was a computer shop. They built many systems for schools and larger companies locally. The main build was a slot 1 pii 300 processor. Over time they saw performance issues and lockups because the fans would get weak or fail. Then one day the feds had shut down the store. Turned out the batch of cpu's they bought were 233 chips that had been modded to 300. They worked fine at that speed but ran hot and someone did an investigation and had contacted intel. All the chips left in inventory were confiscated and they had to provide proof they purchased them as 300's and didn't do the modding themselves. Funny thing was if you decased them and put your own heatsink and fan on them they were actually great cpu's. They also got a hold of large batch of motherboards who's caps were 85C and not great quality. Basically a 3 month timebomb. Once changed out to 105C caps they were great. I think these two issues caused them to think the computer store was more hassle than it was worth and they shut it down.

[@lucysluckyday]

It was probably an electronics engineering student's final year project (PCB board design). Someone (him?) might have then decided to make it into a complete business since the idea of using the lead carrier pentium versions is actually rather genius! It never occurred to me that you could use those chips remapped into standard PGA sockets ... its actually a really smart idea!

[@nopochoclos]

Arount the age of Pentium 100 mhz in Argentina we called PINTEL (PAINTED INTEL) the letters are painted with serigraphy, so bad quality paint thet cracks with the nail, i dont remember if a Pentium 75 are painted to show as Pentium 100

[@gordonfreeman320]

Wow, this is really interesting. Just found your channel!

[@CPUGalaxy]

thank you for visiting my channel

[@gordonfreeman320]

@@CPUGalaxy I have a CPU collection of my own! Let me know if you want me to share pictures.

[@CPUGalaxy]

of course I want! please share 😍

[@cedric0850]

Great video! I also have such a version marked Pentium MMX Tillamook-233M S85 2V. So whoever was faking these was continuing to do so years later. The packaging is exactly the same with the sandwich structure and the golden spreader… I will not cut it open to see which mobile version it is but probably a 200MHz mobile Pentium MMX.

[@IkanGelamaKuning]

Saw one pc advert in 2004, say "Genius Intel Pentium 4". :-)

[@kbhasi]

I remember that Linus Tech Tips reviewed a more modern laptop CPU converted to desktop use. I didn't know something like that was already done many years before that! I also like your accent.

[@mjouwbuis]

I had a 386DX40 laptop CPU on an adaptor PCB in a desktop motherboard back when I couldn't afford a 486.

[@TheAmazingAdventuresOfMiles]

@@mjouwbuis As a young teenager, myself and my school friend both bought new PC's about the same time and he got an Intel 486SX 25mhz which cost him a lot of money back then. I didn't have his financial means so I ended up with a lowly AMD 386DX 40mhz, this was a lot cheaper. Humorously though, my machine benchmarked either the same or slightly faster in everything we ran on them, including a higher frame rate in Doom, so he was well annoyed.

[@kamerat7689]

I don't think the bumped voltage do any harm if the dies are the same as the desktop Pentiums. The lower voltage only matters in a laptop where battery life is the key. Also the core gets much better cooling in this package compared to the ceramic ones. It would be interesting to see if it can run much past 133MHz.

[@CPUGalaxy]

Kamerat hmm. also interesting idea. But when I did the short tests this thing was getting extremely hot. Anyway I think that overclocking is reducing lifetime and this thing might be unstable. I have another one with 233MHz. I will try to get it to 300. 🙃

[@Spazilton1]

@@CPUGalaxy try to compile some linux binaries. That is the bane of any unstable Intel chip. Also where did you source these, I'd love to play around with some.

[@thrillscience]

How much profit could someone make by repackaging chips like this? Was it really a viable business?

[@CPUGalaxy]

thrillscience Its a really good question and I have absolutely no answer on that. But for sure someone made profit. Otherwise it would not exist. 😉

[@JonWhitton]

China fake-tastic!

[@chenli9734]

@@CPUGalaxy I come from China and I want to know how much you pay for this. Generally this chips are genuinel pentium chips, but most probably for industrial control use. So basically these chips are industrial garbage now and be selled by weight. People buy them hope to refine some gold now. I think if you buy this in China of course in garbage collection company the price maybe 0.5 us buck eatch. But this refurbished one maybe expensive more. So I think this job is more profitable than imagine.

[@zwz.zdenek]

@@CPUGalaxy There's just one flaw - people don't always do things for profit. Especially far from America.

[@0311Mushroom]

In volume, yes. And in over 40 years, I have never seen gold topped pentium processors. These were probably made for the Chinese market, from overstock inventory.

[@hypercube33]

In the 90s they have a ton of these flood the market - celerons esp. They sold them at computer shows or in catalogs at a little lower price, but most people have no idea they were buying fakes and would be happy

[@alpcns]

In China anything is possible. Even chips without a die inside. Anything, literally anything goes.

[@CPUGalaxy]

lol, thats true

[@alpcns]

@@CPUGalaxy You have a great channel, BTW. Subscribed! Merry Christmas, and healthy, happy, successful 2021!

[@vincentguttmann2231]

May I ask where you work so that you got access to an industrial x-ray machine?

[@SUCRA]

Great video. Thanks for showing that CPU. It makes sense that they would do that and overclock a 100 mhz pentium to 133. Some shadiness is to be expected.

[@VikingDudee]

I wouldn't necessary call it a fake but, but its not original, At least it still worked and performed just like the original.

[@TheHolyGhost777]

Mobile processor passed as desktop cpu = fake #1 100 MHz cpu sold as 33% faster = fake #2 I'm sure you've always got a contrary 'comment' to make... Don't ya? Just sayin'?! LOL

[@VikingDudee]

@@TheHolyGhost777 Well I mean yes, but if it performs the same and works the same with no issues, then is it really a fake? I mean it is still a real Pentium that intel released but modified, If you bought that CPU and got something slower than what was advertised or something that just doesn't work with your system at all then I'd consider it a fake. This I'd consider more of a replica than anything. I mean in old hardware, there are plenty of replacement parts that are actually not old but are recent, not original yes, but they function the same. Guess everyone is different, I consider a fake being something that is well fake, like here I'm selling this ram stick, and you get it in the mail, and it looks legit, but the memory chips are painted on and the thing doesn't function at all. And don't judge me before you actually get to know me, thats the problem with todays society. I'm allowed to have a different view than you.

[@Hessi]

Schönes Video. Habe auch ein Abo dagelassen. Ich schätze, Du kommst aus Süddeutschland, oder? :-) Genau solche CPUs gibt es auch heute noch aus China zu kaufen. Die bauen immer noch aktuelle Mobile CPUs in Packages von Desktop-CPUs. Der Linus von LTT hatte die auch mal getestet. Was für ein Aufwand für den von mir doch recht niedrig geschätzten Gewinn bei dieser Nummer.

[@CPUGalaxy]

Vielen Dank 😃. Schau mal die erste Minute dieses Videos und du weißt woher ich komme kzbin.info/www/bejne/p5KqgquQer6Vr5I 😅

[@Hessi]

@@CPUGalaxy Ah! Okay! Soll ich jetzt lieber Englisch schreiben? :-D Tatsächlich hatte ich noch keinen Kontakt zu Österreichern, die Englisch in irgendeiner Situation sprachen (mussten). Der Am386/40 war meine erste PC-CPU. Schon toll! Rüstete auf einen 486/33 auf und war ziemlich enttäuscht. Den VLB habe ich aber erst später gehabt. IIRC mit einem 486/66 @ 80 MHz. Hatte einen IDE-VLB-Controller (Promise?), der mich total wahnsinnig gemacht hatte. Der passte nicht ohne Nachbearbeitung in den Slot und war generell zickig. Ich hätte einige Brocken aber nicht abgeben sollen. Habe mir erst vor einiger Zeit wieder einen Am5x86 mit Board von einem Bekannten gekauft. Ich sammele sonst nur Telespiele und Homecomputer. Freue mich, im neuen Jahr Deine Videos zu schauen. Macht schon echt Bock.

[@LawnMowersThingsThatMakeNoise]

I surmise that it was produced to fill the gap whereby there are not many originals available to buy on the internet for retro computer use

[@horstnele]

Wo hast Du das Wurst Probiermesser her? Meines ist von AVO

[@shroomiestshroom3655]

left over voltage for overclock maybe, 100-133mhz, performed like that in benchmarks, so possibly just an even cheaper way of producing a 133 clone.

[@stephenfazekas5054]

When gold was $250 an ounce they use for more back then

[@qwertykeyboard5901]

Might be bronze.

[@vacciniumaugustifolium1420]

@@qwertykeyboard5901 old CPU are well known to contain a fantastic amount of gold

[@АлексейГриднев-и7р]

I would have definitely kept it. Even if it's not "genuine", it's a pretty amazing collectible item in its own right 😀

[@jeffm2787]

Might have been salvaged CPU's from devices (boards) that didn't pass manufacturing specs. Ended up in China to recycle. They've been doing that for decades now. Salvage and put in a new package. Very good profit margin.

[@0xbenedikt]

I have my doubts that it’s possible to remove a such high pincount CPU without damage from a broken board and then resolder it. The pins must all be messed up after removing it.

[@jeffm2787]

@@0xbenedikt The Chinese have been doing this for years. Not all that hard really. Do some research, fake and / or reused chips is a big business in China. They've even sold reused chips as new to the US Military. Big expensive high pin count chips at that.

[@Di3mondDud3]

Soooo what youre saying is we can get cheap knock off pentium 1's for budget retro builds? With a pretty gold top? And being metal would take a heat sink well?

[@heinrichhein2605]

How is the lead frame connected to the PCB, soldering looked also wire bonded?

[@CPUGalaxy]

Heinrich hein its soldered. sorry that I did not show this exactly.

[@heinrichhein2605]

Thanks, amazing Video!

[@stevenclark2188]

For someone interested in just the performance for late-era DOS software or early Win95 this seems like a fine option if the price is right. Don't know how easy it'd be to get the parts for the rest of the system anymore though.

[@lemagreengreen]

I had absolutely no idea these semi-fake chips existed, genuinely cannot work out why someone would make this! I guess there was some small market for the higher-clocked Pentium mobile chips but was it really worth it? It's weird, I definitely never saw one of these back in the day either.

[@CPUGalaxy]

yes, indeed those are weired CPUs. And therefore sthg special. 🙂

[@ErraticPT]

Had one of these briefly a long time ago, was sold locally by a slightly dodgy looking guy at a weekly market. They looked strange but were sold at about 60% of the price of a "genuine" desktop intel chip. I wish I bought more of them (as I know collectors look for them) but at the time the cpu was just about superseded. Still a nice curiosity atleast, which I wish I hadn't sold.

[@No_Way_NO_WAY]

Well... higher voltage => higher clock speed. With the good heat sink of an desktop pc, i assume they didnt need to lower the voltage and therefore basically overclocked the 100MHz CPU to 133MHz. Stability as you mentioned (and mabye heat excess) would be the only issues.

[@JasonStevens]

Over volted and over clocked, but it's an intel part. It's pretty ingenious actually to build the socket adapter and heat spreader to get the thing running!

[@MaverickBlue42]

Companies still do this nowadays, often with GPU's. Some of them function, tho usually not up to the advertised specs, some are kinda flaky and glitch out randomly, and others are just broken.

[@fryode]

I had a Toshiba Satellite 420CDT laptop with the 120MHz version of the same CPU inside. It ran a 60MHz bus with a 2x multiplier. I learned how to modify the multiplier and bus speed. I went straight for 66MHz bus and 2.5x multiplier for 166MHz and it worked, but it got hot and battery life sucked. I ended up backing down to the same 2x multiplier and keeping the 66MHz bus for 133MHz, which actually increased battery life a little bit since everything on the system bus was running 10% faster so work got done faster. That was a weird machine. Didn't have an L2 cache.

[@sharkscrapper]

Very interesting. Thank you for sharing.

[@wolvenar]

I'm assuming the mobile CPU is 3.3 vt tolerant. I was able to run a desktop 133 at 2 volt long ago when I was attempting to make a home brew mobile system in order to get better battery life.

[@Kenny-bw2cz]

It's not exactly a fake. The chip inside is an Intel chip ... But how did they get the 100mhz chip to run at 133? They overclocked it in hardware somehow?

[@mstcrow5429]

Wouldn't it cost more to take an MMC-1 CPU, and then engineer a Socket 7 package around it, than a normal Socket 7 CPU?

[@antoniomaglione4101]

When I wanted to put together a cheap machine in those years, I used a Cyrix processor. Fake processors didn't arrive here in Europe. But tons of DRAM did, driving mad whoever tried to assemble a PC together.

[@ErraticPT]

Here in the UK, atleast local to me anyway they were available if you knew where to look. As for fake DRAM, yeah I remember being bitten a few times then with sticks that were low capacity, slower rated than marked or even had dummy chips on them!

[@Mr_Meowingtons]

I bet that 133 "100" will over cock like a BOSS!!! Mobile CPU are clocked down desktop CPU's i bet that thing would cock to 150 easy i got P233's over clocked to 300Mhz with a 100Mhz FSB

[@Mr_Meowingtons]

@Michaels Carport its kind of a shame they did not push the P1 MMX chip and keep that the beget because the p1 and 400 or 500mhz with a 100mhz FSB would have been a monster..

[@jrherita]

A Mobile Pentium 100 @ 133 mhz desktop speeds makes perfect sense from a clocking / OC perspective. The Mobile Pentiums were 0.35 micron / 350nm instead of 0.60/600 nm. The desktop 0.35 micron chips clocked up to 200 mhz (3.3 volts), so a "100 mhz" mobile chip @ 2.9 volts should have no problem at 133 mhz @ 3.3 volts. I'd suspect you could OC this to 166 mhz without any fuss. I can only assume Intel was selling these cheap because at the time the mobile market was very small, and they were probably trying to drive adoption / get control of the mobile market, while the desktop market still commanded a premium for expandability and so forth. Or alternatively, they were simply selling these for very cheap into non-premium markets at the time, the buyer/faker got a load of these for cheap, and then remarked and re-exported to markets that were used to paying higher prices. Either way these actually look pretty cool for fakes, and were sold at the time where binning was almost completely artificial - I'd be surprised if there were any 0.35 micron Pentiums that couldn't run at 133 mhz or higher.

[@alvaroacwellan9051]

I wouldn't say it was overclocked and overvolted. I'd say it was just restored after picking it (back in Intel's factory) for a laptop part and giving it a lower voltage and clock speed rating ;)

[@gilancadre6236]

Also ,the original Intel cpu's was built using highly Gold coated materials, but china made is more likely painted with Gold color

[@MissFoxification]

These are still made today. Perhaps laptop processors are considered an incomplete product/part and not subject to particular tariffs or are able to be imported where desktop CPU's can't be. There's always a reason for such things and it's usually to do with money.

[@HeyRusse]

man hört ganz deutlich, dass du deutscher bist, aber... very cool video i subbed and liked

[@sharifsk0722]

I like your way of content creation I like this video

[@CPUGalaxy]

thank you 🙏🏻

[@SianaGearz]

I think it's fundamentally the same die anyway as desktop 133MHz CPU. For sure it is cooled very nicely in this heatspreader package, so i'm not too concerned for it. Maybe some binning differences, but perhaps not to a disadvantage. The flank margin decreases at lower voltage, which may be a reason the CPU got sold as 100MHz mobile, while same quality die can really be good for 133MHz with higher desktop voltage.

[@rootbeer666]

Mobile dies are often a better binning, working on a lower core voltage, which means they offer excellent overclocking headroom. IMO there's a high probability this was stable at 133MHz at desktop core voltage.

[@soylentgreenb]

Intel used the exact same dies for desktop and mobile and just binned them and gave them different voltages. Only later tillamook parts were made specifically for mobile after desktop moved on to slot 1. This looks like a P54CS part by the code on the frame. This CPU will be perfectly fine with 3.3V; thats what its desktop counterparts ran at with the same CPU dies cut from the same wafers. This CPU could have been a desktop part running at perhaps anywhere between 120 MHz to 150 MHz at 3.3V, wherever it would have passed intel testing, but since power consumption matters in a laptop they chose to clock it slower (power goes linearly as frequency) at a lower voltage (power goes as voltage squared). On these older CPUs where leakage was not a big issue the power consumption of this would have been around 3.3^2/2.8^2*133/100 = 184% of the power consumption of the mobile chip at stock. So they got 33% more performance almost straight across the board at 84% more power. On a desktop that's an obvious win; especially considering the P54CS 133 MHz from intel was an 11 W part and the rest of the system uses maybe 50 W. 33% more performance at 5 W extra power consumption is very much a win. On a laptop that consumes perhaps 15-20W in total and relies on a battery that likely was NIMH or NICAD, that's just huge. My guess is that there was some great overstock or price difference that made it worth it to turn these into 133 MHz desktop CPUs and arbitrage the difference. Intel could have done it themselves since this likely could have made it as a qualified 133 MHz part, but they where too big and too slow and did not want to remanufacture finished laptop CPUs back into ceramic desktop CPUs. The Chinese likely did not do very much work to verify that all these chips indeed ran stable at 133 MHz and they didn't care about their reputation and were flexible enough to do the remanufacturing.

[@sortofsmarter]

I just find it so amazing at the quality and the time necessary to produce such a fake chip. Was there such a large enough profit margin to be able to acquire a mobile chip then de-lid it and the go through all the steps to reinstall it on a new desktop die, then fake the bios? for a 10% gain. maybe I'm missing something or was the chip worth double? so your gonna make $200 to $300 more I could see the effort but in 12 months your hole prosses is obsolete...But I find what your doing absolutely the coolest thing for retro chips on KZbin...

[@CPUGalaxy]

Thank you very much

[@lookoutforchris]

Hmmm... I made a comment about China but it was censored and removed almost immediately.

[@0311Mushroom]

It also deoends on when. Until the last decade or so, computer ownership in China was rare. These might have originally been made for domestic use, where of course some would then leak overseas.

[@marksmithcollins]

In China, labor cost is negative.

[@circuit10]

@@lookoutforchris What about China?

[@timun4493]

running a parted rated for 100MHz with 2.9V at 133MHz with 3.3V does not sound unreasonable, if the mobile version is the same die sold in a different package it might actually be the same speed grade bin

[@marlls1989]

Nooooooo! Why didn't you use a hot air gun or an iron to de-solder the cpu instead of cutting its pins?

[@piotrludorowski9529]

Science requires to hurt poor little cpu, sad, but im now convinced. I still have laptop with this lead frame, brown thing package. But mine is p2 233 i think, but looking very similar

[@kennethsrensen7706]

It's not really a ' faked ' CPU , they did this to keep up the demand for desktops that was much more populair than laptops back then . The demand for CPU's was really high and they simply couldn't keep up the supply and also the mobile processor was a bit cheaper so they could easier make more cheap desktops . Also they could get really high stock from Intel of the mobile versions because production was way higher than the demand in the west . ( most people wouldn't buy a laptop back then when they could get a desktop that was way easier / possible to upgrade with all frm graphics to audio to ram ect ect ) I have seen this be done even today with the newer processors such as I5 processors . They work perfectly fine and is usually same benchmark as the ' real ' desktop version . The reason for the ' golden ' metal plate was to function as a heatsink and many people would add an additional heatsink with a fan ( some region in China have very hot climate ) I learned this when I lived in China and the hot climate make it much more demanding for cooling ( much more than in the west ) For example my own computer could easy run on 3.5 Ghz with the standard cooler when I lived in Denmark ( the cpu was originally 2.5 Ghz ) but when I moved to china I had to slow it down to 2.6 Ghz until I got a better cooler . Even then , at the very most hot days I still had to ' slow ' it down to 2.8 Ghz from 3.5 simply because temperature reached more than 40 plus degree Celsius ..... Now I live in Philippines and here is even hotter and my present CPU is at stock 2.83 Ghz . It can easy run at 4.6 Ghz on the cooler days , but the hottest days I actually have to slow it to just 2.6 Ghz so it doesnt run too hot . Im planning on upgrade to a peltier solution to keep temperatures around ambient at it's max speed . ( I have to build that myself and it's not that hard to do ) ( And im using pure original Intel CPU ) So all in all It's not really fake CPU , it's more like , demand and market and we use what we can get solution that the Chinese did / doing , Because if you ask they will tell you excately what's inside and the numbers they use are used in the Chinese database / catalog of CPU's ( yes the numbers is NOT in Intels but whatever it function and it's most important ) Edit - Keep up those interestin videos , I enjoy this ' nostalgia ' it's great : )

[@HASANHASAN-ts7xh]

Interesting fact: KZbin show me Alibaba's ad in this video 🤣🤣🤣

[@CPUGalaxy]

🤣🤣

[@campbellmorrison8540]

Seems like a huge amount of work to create a fake chip. I would like one of these mobile versions in it lead frame for my collection, never seen one before

[@abie1308]

There was probably enough money in the scheme to make sense. Buy laptop CPUs for cheap, mount them in a desktop package and sell them as higher clocked and more expensive CPUs

[@campbellmorrison8540]

@@abie1308 They must be desperate is all I can say, its a huge amount of effort for little gain I would have thought.

[@spicytuna62]

It's pretty cool seeing all the wires that run from the CPU die to the pins in the x-rays. Not something you see every day.

[@TheEscape2012]

but why was this done? Were the mobile versions cheaper? Or is this a modern fake?

[@rubenprovencio-b1u]

Hola donde los compraste esos mmx falsos

[@feiplotts5484]

they are still selling mobile CPUs in desktop packages for Intel Core i in China

[@Zagroseckt]

i used to get these cheep. as long as the motherboard's bios could handle the cpu it would work fine. Speed wise you get some leway putting the moble into a large packige more cooling and such. I cant say for all manufactus of these but the suplier i had did sell them as surplus or reclaimed mobile cpus in adapters. for about half what you would pay for a full desktop version at the time. me and my friends being a bit on the poor side of the tracks ended up relying on these for a while and we didnt see any degregation through the life of the systems. of course back then a system wouldn't need to preform nearly as long as our modern setups wich do to the slowdown of leaps of speed tend to hang in there for years and years still can't believe my motherboard cpu and ram is as old as it is and im just now upgrading. Gen 3 i5 and only now just seeing some preformince problems. and there more related to ram speed than the cpu. just cant seem to push the video card to 100% anymore :) BTW 1 motherboard/cpu/ram has outlived 3 sepret upgrades of video cards. skipping a gen or to of video inbetween.

[@18000rpm]

Could these chips have been salvaged from old laptops?

[@mjouwbuis]

More likely overstock as I think this package would be particularly hard to resolder reliably (harder than a BGA, unless I'm mistaken).

[@Aeduo]

If it is reliable, that's not a bad use of probably over stocked components that would maybe otherwise just go to waste.

[@nmtk-xdcreeper8625]

Hey, what is the name of this CPU and where did you buy the real one? Please, i really need an answer

[@abymohanan2043]

Thank you so much for this video 👍🏻👌🏻✌🏻

[@SovereignKnight74]

It was probably overclocked as a 133. Could have been silicon that could overclock without anyone noticing.

[@twoshedsjackson6478]

Its not really a fake, its a modified Intel mobile chip. That has involved some serious engineering cost to produce.You'd have thought it would have been cheaper to buy a desktop chip in the first place.

[@38911bytefree]

Even when it is fake, pretty neat look and after all it still an original Intel CPU. I have seen some thinkpads like the 380 use this sort of mount. Low quality brands tend to buy the obsolte production lines and materia once the fabrication or integration have moved one step foward. The plant is bought for cheap, probably a laptop assembly facility that had the machinery to moun this thing into PCBs and also large quantity of unused materials. There is an entire market for this parts once their life cicle come to an end. A well known semiconductor company that tend to have good pricing and also a good policiy of keep their legacy prodcuts alive (VERY GOOD) is also knon to buy plant from other companies once they are done with them of they are not longer usable for their needs. My guess is something like that happened here too. Because mobile version probably is cheaper but the mounting process doesnt look easy ... UNLESS ... you have the proper machine that can. And I dont see them buying an sky expensive machine to fake CPUs. More like an abandoned production line bought dirty cheap

[@chincemagnet]

Gotta hand it to some of the Chinese bootleggers, they come up with some ingenious stuff. What’s not right, is when they do that with the intent to rip people off

[@Shmbler]

Aww you destroyed it. Thats really a nice item to collect.

[@CPUGalaxy]

all for science 🥺

[@phuang3]

It's not faked. It's geniune CPU made by INTEL, but in unofficial package. At that time, the Chinese had no capability to fake a CPU, they only remark it.

[@CPUGalaxy]

okay. so if you buy a BMW with a 133 HP engine and you find out that only the engine is original made by BMW and it has only 120 HP and the rest of the car is not made by BMW. Would you still stay: oh no, this is not a fake? come on, due to the fact the printed intel logo on too of their package and specs which are not the original intel ones for this die inside this is clearly missleading on purpose and thats it why its a fake. Just my opinion. You cant say its original intel cpu coz a cpu is not just the core, its the whole thing including package.

[@MrKillswitch88]

I haven't seen any of these in many years as such used to turn up on eBay in the early 2000s.

[@rollmeister]

Back in the day, if it worked I would not have cared.

[@ezzeldin101]

I wondered.. is today's CPUs are faked like this OLD ONE???

[@CPUGalaxy]

they were faked in the 90‘s and not today

[@ezzeldin101]

@@CPUGalaxy thank you sir

[@mikem.9197]

Yes China still repackages more recent chips. LGA laptop chips are still adapted to BGA desktop chips to this day. Frequently they will be discarded engineering samples.

[@ezzeldin101]

@@mikem.9197 Ohhhh Dear!🤦‍♂️

[@fungo6631]

2:16 This is 486DX2-66 performance, not Pentium 133.

[@rabidbigdog]

The thermal engineering seems fine.

[@aterack833]

3:31 you know what else is easier than you would expect? Slipping and severely cutting your fingers, be careful

[@danthompsett2894]

wouldve liked to have seen that chip relidded with better more modern compound or liquid metal, i reckon it would run just fine.

[@zwz.zdenek]

There's nothing wrong with that white heatsink paste. Liquid metal doesn't last, plus there's a risk of a short circuit. And these old CPUs didn't heat up much in the first place.

[@danthompsett2894]

@@zwz.zdenek true just for shits and grins see how far it could oc'd liquid metal is ok as long as it doesn't come into contact with aluminium or non nickel plated copper. and the copper the liquid metal merely gets embedded in the copper it doesn't corrode.

[@Iamninjathing]

are you toto wolff by any chance

[@CPUGalaxy]

😅

[@the-retro-center-espanol]

wow, I had no idea about these fake Chinese CPUs, thanks