moonlight-strider

A while back, I upgraded to a pre-built Alienware Aurora R8 with a Core i5 9400, 1660Ti, 1TB HDD, and 16GB of DDR4-2666. Over time, I have improved it, upgrading to 16GB of DDR4-3000, adding a 500GB SATA SSD, and most recently, adding a liquid cooler to it. The reason why I added a liquid cooler was because the way the case is designed only allows for the tiniest of air coolers, and the stock one that came with it might have been an inch and a half thick, if I'm lucky. Under Prime95 load, it would sound like a jet engine and easily reach 90-95C. In games such as DOOM 2016, or really, any game that is slightly intensive at all, it would get loud enough to be audible through my headphones. Enough was enough, and because of space restrictions, I could only get a liquid cooler to quiet it down, so I did. The cases across the Aurora R8 line are the same, and the higher end models use 120MM liquid coolers, so I was able to look up the part number of the liquid cooler that came with the higher end versions, and get the retail version, an EVGA CLCC 120MM for about US$50 off Amazon. I got it in there, an immediately saw vastly reduced temperatures under Prime 95 load (max 70C) and much better idle temps (32C on a good day, 34-38C average). It is dead quiet no matter how high the CPU load is, the only problem is now the GPU fan. My only concern is that the angling on the tubes is bad, but I will note that they do not come into contact with any sharp edges. My question is, will this cause any problems over time? They sort of have to be bent this way to reach where they need to go (the radiator can only be installed one way in the case), and because I'm going to be able to get around USD$600 or so in the near future, I want to know whether or not I should buy a new PSU and GPU, or buy a new case, motherboard, and PSU to alleviate this if it is a problem. It's been running for several weeks like this now, and I've not noticed any issues, knock on wood. It came with a 460W PSU, so either way, I'm going to need to get a better PSU because I really don't want to be stuck with that thing for when I do get a new GPU.

I have a Dell Inspiron 5676 that I recently upgraded the CPU on (R5 1400 to R5 2600) and I've noticed that the internet speed seems to be significantly reduced on this system for a reason I can't pinpoint. As to whether or not this has anything to do with the CPU upgrade, your guess is as good as mine. Specs are as follows: AMD Ryzen 5 2600 AMD RX 570 4GB 12GB DDR4 2400MHz 2 1TB HDDs, one for boot and one for games Here's what I've tried so far: I have a WiFi router that my PC is plugged into via a Cat6 Ethernet cable. It's a quite new cable, but I switched the PC to the built in WiFi to see if it was something with the cable. It's not. Regardless of whether or not this system is connected to Ethernet or WiFi, it always gets ~10mbps- far lower than it should be reading on Ookla SpeedTest. I've tested this system before and have gotten up to 80mbps as far as the download speed is concerned. Interestingly enough, the upload speed is actually the same as it's always been, around 8mbps- meaning that I'm now getting the same download speed as I am upload on this machine. This is not good because I will have to re-download games and things once I get an SSD, and I also just don't want slouchy internet when this machine was far more capable not long ago. I have a laptop I tested, and it got ~30mpbs (it's an older one from around 2012), so it's specific to the Inspiron 5676, yet it is not the fault of either the WiFi specifically, or the Ethernet specifically. It's something else that's messing with my speeds, and I'm not sure what that is. I have no background programs open except ATI Radeon Settings Lite, Malwarebytes, and Razer Synapse. I am using Charter Spectrum internet with a Linksys AC1200 router and an ARRIS TM902A cable modem.

I just upgraded my Dell Inspiron 5676 from a Ryzen 5 1400 to a Ryzen 5 2600. Of course, to make sure I got the heatsink on properly, I tested it with Speccy after the first boot. Here's what Speccy gave me: Keep in mind, this is what I saw after the first boot. I had no idea if I had done something wrong. I scrambled to turn it off, cleaned off the default thermal paste, thinking I had mounted the cooler wrong or something and it wasn't getting good thermal contact, and put some Arctic Silver MX-4 on it and tried again. When I got to the next boot, Speccy was showing the same exact crazy results. Sure enough, I opened HWMonitor, and: Looks like I wasted the default thermal paste on the cooler, oh well, MX-4 is decent thermal paste. It's pretty funny to play with now, when my CPU is at 60 degrees, Speccy says my CPU is at around 100 or more. I ran cinebench and Speccy said my CPU was at a whopping 116 degrees. Wonderful. I think this has something to do with me changing out the CPU with the same Windows install, or Speccy may just be reading the temperatures wrong. This is an X370 based board, so that also may have something to do with it. I did feel the heatsink, and it's pulling heat off of the processor like it's supposed to. I think my PC would have shut off at 90 or 95c (close to the maximum threshold of the 2600), long before it reached 116c. I just found this funny because it scared me so bad at first. I the 73c is a little high for load, but this thermal paste is still settling in and I was running cinebench when the processor reached that temp. I'm also using the stock AMD cooler that came with the processor.

I'm somewhat surprised by this. It's also a 460W, and the official minimum requirements state that the RTX 2060 needs at least a 500W PSU. I am, however, aware that the RTX 2060 pulls 160W under load. With the Ryzen 5 2600 pulling only 65W, I probably could get away with it. There aren't any visible ratings on that Dell PSU, as far as 80+ is concerned. For further information, it's a Dell AC460AM-01. I'm actually not specifically deadset on replacing it anymore. I was just thinking about that because I had a friend tell me "You won't put the 2600 in that, pls don't," and I wanted to make sure it would be a good idea, seeing as you guys showed support for continuing its use before. It's funny, because when I first got it I was happy that it was an AM4 based system, I assumed I could upgrade in the future, and when I actually got that chance, I went to the total opposite of that. If I can get a good verification on that PSU, I will likely put in the 2600 tonight and slowly upgrade it as time passes. Anyways, this is my most recent upgrade path for this machine. To elaborate on it, this machine has two RAM slots, one with a 4GB stick and one with an 8GB stick. If I buy a good second 2400MHz 8GB stick, I can take out that 4GB and bring it up to 16GB. Also, should I use one large SSD, or use a small SSD and a faster HDD? The same friend also told me that it would be better to use one large SSD rather than use a small one for boot and HDDs for games. pcpartpicker upgrade: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/athlon-power/saved/XgQRkL

Okay, so here's where I'm at in this journey to upgrade: I have myself a Ryzen 5 2600. Still using the same system as before, and the 2600 has not yet been installed. My question is: Would it be better to build an entire new computer (I did the math and it would cost around ~US$700, minus the CPU because I already have it, of course), or just upgrade the one I have? I've also decided that, price to performance wise, the RTX 2060 for only $350 is the way to go. My big concern is that my locked memory speed (2400MHz) could possibly become a bottleneck. This is an X370 chipset board, so I'm not sure why it's limited to 2400MHz- X370 is capable of much better speeds, I think. But it also being X370 means that this system does have an enthusiast chipset, even if it is last gen. I'm likely going to get a 1TB M.2 SSD as well. Here's the link to my pcpartpicker for the theoretical new system: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/athlon-power/saved/MQfmgs

I am currently using the same system I've had for a little while now, a Dell Inspiron 5676 with an AMD Ryzen 5 1400, 12GB of DDR4 2400MHz RAM, and an AMD RX 570. I did something incredibly stupid, for reasons which I don't find to make sense anymore, and decided to try to change out the thermal paste on the CPU. The first thing that went wrong was that the thermal paste had already gotten dry and hard enough to stick to the CPU like glue. The moment I put enough upward force on it, out the CPU flew from the socket with the locking arm still down, with the heatsink. After this happened, I decided to go further and try to remove the CPU from the heatsink using the twisting method- the CPU did twist off, and it also took incredible force to do so, so when I finally got it off, it flung off and I scraped a knuckle on the heatsink pretty good, while bending several pins alongside the edge of the processor at the same time. I also somehow managed to get a little bit of the dried thermal paste onto the CPU pin area, and I couldn't dig it out very easily. I decided to get a very thin wire I had laying around, and soften the old thermal paste all in the pins with some rubbing alcohol, which I mostly did successfully. I couldn't tell you if some residue was left behind or not. I bent the pins back as straight as possible, and the CPU went into the socket with only a tiny bit of extra force. The system POSTed, and I got into Windows just fine, but noticed that the idle temps were higher than they were before, and also noticed very sporadic thermal changes- 47c up to 50c in a second, and then 50c to 55c a second later, and then it would tank back down to 46 or 47c. I decided that I had probably put too much thermal paste on there, so I removed the heatsink and tried again, and investigated the pins further. The CPU socket had bent them all back to where they should've been, and there are none missing. I was able to put it back into the socket like butter, and gave it fresh thermal paste and booted it. The temperatures are still occasionally wonky. It usually stays around 46c, but this is a higher idle than what I was getting, around 40c. I am using Arctic Silver MX-4 thermal paste.

This is an extension of a prior post I made where I was originally going to get an entirely new system, but I ended up scrapping that idea in favor of continuing to use my current system and push it as hard as I can, upgrade-wise. Essentially, I want to push this thing to its absolute physical limits (this includes the kind of processor I will be installing, etc.), before I damage something in it. I was told that I'm limited by 65 watt TDP processors, which would leave my maximum processor upgrade at a Ryzen 7 2700. However, I have seen different Inspiron 5676's with Ryzen 7 2700X's in them- these processors have a TDP of 105 watts. I'm not sure what to believe on this topic, or if the motherboards in those Inspiron 5676's are different than the one in mine. I figured out that my motherboard uses the AMD x370 chipset using Speccy- this means that, among other things, it should support RAM that is faster than 2400MHz (2666MHz), but from what I can tell, Dell states the official maximum RAM speed as 2400MHz. I'm not sure why this is, or why Dell would cripple their systems, even with something as trivial as that. This, among other things, was a reason that I strongly wished to outright replace this system- if there's limits on the RAM that diverge from the basic chipset provided to Dell by AMD, it's untelling as to how many other changes they've made to cut costs while simultaneously lowering performance.

That PSU isn't going to cut it. 460W, standard Dell PSU. I think it may have 80+ Bronze, it may not. First thing I would do if I were working with that upgrade path would be to change it out with something better. This comes with Dell Update so I've got whatever updates they've sent out.

I never insinuated that my thought process was completely derived from logic. It was dumb, but for a little while, I genuinely thought that way. Funnily enough, I have two Pentium III systems- one has a PIII Katmai @500MHz and the other has a PIII Coppermine @600MHz.

This originally formed from my interest in older computers. Early on, I wasn't as... versed as I am now, and I was generally distrustful of any technologies which strayed very far from the status quo formula we have been using for decades (CPU, RAM, HDD, Video Card, Sound Card, Etc.). For me, making chips like that into a primary storage medium made no sense. I was also referencing ancient reports, back when SSDs were unstable- of course, that has improved greatly. I was of the thought process that we had perfected HDDs over the course of decades, and we had not yet done that with SSDs. I felt that they were glorified flash drives being adapted to be used as HDDs, and it seemed like a bad idea to me in general.

I did enable GPU acceleration, if that's what you meant, to limited success. The program I use automatically uses GPU accelerated streaming, I think. I don't prefer to do a custom build as there is a much higher up front cost and I'll have to save money for several months- at least, to achieve the results I'm currently looking for.

The G5 isn't mine, it's my mom's, so until she's done using it (which she's expressed that she won't be done with it for another 1.5 to 2 years), I won't be able to use it. By then, it will be fairly outdated compared to other upgrades I could seek.

1) This computer does okay, but I've upgraded roughly each year since I first got into this whole jig. It's on the 10 month mark, and this is the first time I've ever had my own income. I'm not exactly rich, so being able to get a high-end machine has always been a dream of mine. With the money I'm getting from my job, I can now do just that. 2) I enjoy streaming occasionally, and this system just doesn't have the horsepower to stream, say, the new Battlefront II, or games of similar spec.I will get dropped frames very often, and I have Charter Spectrum internet, so my internet is not what's bottlenecking. I have a brand new router, and I am connected to it via a Cat6 ethernet cable, so nearly every internet-related bottleneck I can think of is eliminated here. On the same note, my video card is incapable of streaming DOOM 2016 due to buggy driver issues. The capture software I use (OBS) refuses to pick the game up. Looking it up online, I found that due to software issues (which still haven't been patched, by the way) are the root cause. 3) Faster usage in general. I use an HDD for both boot and games, and while I used to strongly dislike the idea of using an SSD, I am now acutely aware of how slow things load off of the good old spinning disks. Also, other models support faster RAM (which may or may not really affect performance- but that part sort of ties in with the latter of reason 1). 4) No integrated CD/DVD drive. While I do have an external USB CD writer, I also need to write DVDs when I'm working with, say, my 2008 Core2Quad Q9550 build, for which I need a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate, or for bootable Linux DVDs for various projects, etc. (The front panel on this thing is also solid- I'd have to damage the front panel permanently to get a DVD drive in there). There are various other reasons, but these are some of the larger points of contention.

I had zero clue you could get parts like that from Dell. I knew you could get memory upgrades (that's why I now have 12GB of RAM, rather than 8). Oops. That does make that option far more appealing. Also, my mother has roughly $300 worth in credit on NewEgg, so I could theoretically offput the GPU on Dell and the CPU on NewEgg and pay for it as I go.

I'd have to wait two months, with the $484 limit, because both GPUs are roughly $600. Also, I'm going to be perfectly honest, I want a new, shiny thing as well. Every upgrade I've had has provided that so far, so once I get a new one, I like the shiny aspect. My first build ever was made in late 2016, a modified Dell studio 540 with a Core2Quad Q6600, 8GB of DDR2 800MHz RAM, and an AMD Radeon HD 6770. My second one was a modified Dell Inspiron 620, with a Core i5 2310, 8GB of DDR3 1333MHz RAM, and a nVidia GTX 1050ti. My third upgrade was the Inspiron 5676- every time, I've gotten a whole new system, and I think that's spoiled me for a bit. The most expensive system I've had yet has been the Inspiron 5676, as the total for the Inspiron 620 was roughly $400, and the total for the Studio couldn't have been more than $100.

The only other reference GPUs that are similar are the Vega series and other RX series GPUs, from what I can tell. Even if I remove it, that also brings up upfront cost. I'm not going to get away with getting a CPU/GPU upgrade that provides a decent amount of improvement without spending ~$700-$800. I'm one of those annoying people who are fairly impatient, and when provided with an opportunity to receive that large of an upgrade that quickly, without much work besides getting the new one out and throwing it on the desk, I become extremely tempted to jump on that. So I apologize for that. A Ryzen 7 1700 costs around $210, and something like the Radeon VII would cost ~$600, or the 2070 would cost ~$500.

The Inspiron does support a CPU upgrade like that, and I have already thought about doing something like that, but I also would like a better graphics card- this case uses a special bracket for the RX570, and as far as I can tell, the bracket is not removable, nor is it interchangeable with other video cards. I would have a better processor, but I would not be able to upgrade my graphics card- I would be stuck in the same situation as the one I would be in if I decided to buy the Inspiron with the RX580.

I must preface this post with a few things: 1) I am 17, which means I am not capable of getting my own credit of any kind. 2) I know that going self-built is a much better option, and if I could go self-built, I would, and I also would be using AMD, not Intel. With that out of the way, here's the situation: I have a job at McDonald's, meaning that I can now spend exorbitant amounts of money on computer hardware, which is exactly what I plan to do. With this job, I am making roughly $484 USD a month. Originally, I was going to build my own Ryzen 7 1700 based system, but due to the upfront cost (it totaled to around ~$1,600 USD), and time it would take me to save that kind of money (around 4 or 5 months), I have decided not to go that route. Here is the pcpartpicker list for that build: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/athlon-power/saved/#view=97BL23 For this new PC, I wanted a fairly large performance boost from my current PC, a Dell Inspiron 5676. I have upgraded it a little from its factory original specs, and this is what it's sitting on right now: AMD Ryzen 5 1400 12GB DDR4 2400MHz 2 1TB HDDs, one for boot and one for games AMD RX 570 4GB My mother has bought quite a large amount of items from Dell, including two different gaming laptops, the first one was an AMD FX based laptop with an RX 560, and the second was a Dell G5 with a Core i7 and a GTX 1060 6GB. She also bought my current desktop there, and a ~$600 USD laptop for my stepsister, among many other things, so Dell has entrusted her with a hefty ~$3,000 USD in credit. I talked to her, and she said she would be willing to use the credit to purchase a desktop and have me pay for the credit bill every month. Because of this, I looked around on Dell for an hour or so, and have decided that my best bet will be to get an Alienware Aurora of some kind. While there are higher-end models of the Dell Inspiron gaming desktop line, the maximum GPU the Intel builds can use is a GTX 1060 3GB and the maximum GPU the AMD builds can use is an RX580. Even though those desktops have more powerful processors, the graphics upgrades would either be minimal, or a downright downgrade from my RX570. The Alienware Aurora is limited to Intel processors only. I will, based on research I've done on all the processors, either be using an Intel i7 8700 or an Intel i7 9700K. I will be using an RTX 2070, because paying $200 USD more for a marginal increase in performance (the RTX 2080) is a waste of money. The i7 9700K is $100 more, again, for a marginal increase in performance, however, there is one large difference between the 9700K and 8700: HyperThreading. Taking from all of the garbage I've heard about MDS, and the many conflicting viewpoints on whether you should disable HyperThreading or not, whether disabling HyperThreading takes a lot or a little performance away from your processor, I am rightly confused. I have studied computers for ~4 years, but I've studied vintage/semi-modern computers- I can tell you which processor is best for a 2003 build as opposed to a 2008 build, or a 1995 build as opposed to a 1999 build, but I can't tell you about anything past ~2010 as readily. With the 9700K, there's no HyperThreading at all. Nothing to disable, nothing extra to worry about, zip, zlich, nada. But it is $100 more expensive than the i7 8700, and it doesn't perform a massive amount better in any sort of workload, from what I've gathered. I want to finish this by expressing my intense irritation that the only AMD builds the Alienware series of computers have are Threadripper builds, which are extremely expensive for fairly ech performance. The lowest-costing one is ~$2,700 USD, and it uses a GTX 1050Ti! I also wish that the Inspiron series of desktops allowed you to use higher-end GPUs in them, or change what GPUs they use period, but they have nearly 0 customization. So, I am stuck using a build with one of these processors. Here are the desktops I'm talking about: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/cty/pdp/spd/alienware-aurora-r8-desktop I will not be going below the ~$1,400 USD desktop as anything lower than the i7 8700 does not give an adequate enough performance boost for me to justify paying that amount for. If I'm going to pay over $1,000 USD for a desktop, I really would like the upgrade to provide a large amount of improvement over my prior computer. Thanks to anybody who decides to drop by and read this novel of a post!

I mean, I don't need this money. It's more of a free $200 to spend on whatever I want. I do a lot of vintage PC collecting and the such, and I don't want to spend it all on monitors for my main PC if the upgrade isn't worth it, is all.

In mid-2016, I went to the local flea market in my area, and left with two Dell SE198WFP for US$20. Since then, these same two monitors have ran these systems, starting back in time, and going to the present: Original - An IBM Thinkcentre M52 with a LGA 775 Intel Pentium 4 HT processor (can't remember the exact speed), 3GB of DDR2 RAM, and an EVGA nVidia GeForce 6200 PCI 512MB 1st Upgrade, first real gaming capable PC - A Dell Studio 540 with an Intel Core2Quad Q6600, with 8GB of DDR2 RAM, and an AMD Radeon HD6770 1GB 2nd Upgrade - A Dell Inspiron 620 with an Intel Core i5 2310, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and an PNY nVidia GeForce 1050Ti 4GB 3rd Upgrade - And my current system, a Dell Inspiron 5676, with an AMD Ryzen 1400, 8GB of DDR4 RAM, and an AMD Radeon RX570 with 4GB VRAM TL;DR, I have had these monitors for quite a long time, used them in many of my builds, even very early ones (Like the P4 build, for example), and I know for a fact that these monitors have been pretty much running non-stop since July of 2017, seeing as I keep my system (and monitors) on 24/7, so that I don't have to resume it from sleep or anything when I get up, and I especially hate rebooting my PCs (I use all mechanical drives, and I have 9 or so background applications that are set to start up on Windows start up- they take negligible amounts of system resources when they're active (they're things such as Steam, GOG, Spotify, the weird Razer cloud driver applet thingy, Malwarebytes, Ccleaner, my antivirus, etc.), so my monitors end up staying on for extended periods of time. Yet, since I got these things for US$20 at a flea market, they have had zero problems, despite running 24/7 since for pretty much at least 1.5 years- probably even longer, but that's the length of time that I can confirm for sure. They are 1440x900, and the bezels on these things aren't exactly thin, so I've had a small part of me that's wanted to upgrade them for quite a while, and I now have the money available to do so. I'm thinking of getting two of these- https://www.amazon.com/Acer-SB220Q-Ultra-Thin-Frame-Monitor/dp/B07CVL2D2S/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8 -but I'm not sure that it's worth spending pretty much all the money I have, and leaving me with US$20. Is the upgrade to 1920x1080 monitors worth it (I can't deal with asymmetrical monitors- I'm either getting two or none, I know that seems picky, but I don't want one big monitor with ultra thin bezels, and one monitor from ~2009)? Or would I be fine just keeping these two? The saying that comes to mind is "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," and I am curious as to whether an upgrade to HD monitors would be worth it, because I've never used an HD monitor before, and I don't know how much better they are compared to what I've used for almost three years now. Sorry for the long-winded post, but I wanted to explain the reasoning as to why I might want to keep using them in the first place.

One way you could do it is go around and ask friends for old hardware that they've got and no longer use. Something like a Radeon 6770 can run a fair amount of games. I got my Radeon 6770 second-hand for my first rig, and it ran great. Like Alex said, finding an old OptiPlex with something like a Core2Quad is your best bet. Try looking at auctions in your area for computers, they sometimes sell them in lots that you can use to get lots of computers for dirt cheap. You can go to govdeals.com and search by location, then search for computer auctions in your area. I recently got 15 computers for just $43 USD fairly recently. If you do ever get a little more money, you can go to shopgoodwill.com and they have computers on there that perform decently for $40-$60, give or take. Just get one of those and pop a Radeon 6770 or other older, well performing GPU in there and it should do alright for what you're wanting. eBay should have older GPUs that run alright for fairly cheap.

Unfortunately, there's quite a large discrepancy between new and old games, so much that it makes it considerably harder to make a hybrid rig like that. If you're really wanting to try and compromise between the two uses, get a Core2Quad system and put something akin to a Radeon HD 6770 or 7770 in it and you should be able to play a decent amount of new-ish games on it while still being able to boot into XP and having hardware support. I know this because my first rig was a Core2Quad Q6600 with 8GB of RAM and a Radeon HD 6770. I was able to play things like Alien: Isolation and Outlast pretty okay, from what I remember.

To be honest, I've probably been quite a bit nit picky throughout this. I just enjoy building as time-accurate a build as possible in a way that somebody back then would've built one. If you're going to go for a dual-core, definitely use a Core2Duo. It shouldn't run as hot and in general they're a better platform than processors that use NetBurst (aka most late Pentium 4's and their derivatives). Seeing as a Pentium D is basically just two Pentium 4's glued together, it's not going to be as good of a solution as an old Core2Duo, which should cost around the same amount, if not cheaper. Like I said, I've been nit picky. If you want to use a GTX 285, go for it. Though I have no idea about PCI riser cables or anything like that. I assume that people want time-accurate builds, instead of a box that's just designed to play old games Win7 and 10 won't support as well as XP. So I do admit I may have over complicated things a bit. I guess it's not normal to be obsessed with 90's and early to mid 2000's hardware, heh. I've also looked at the GTX 285. It'll be more than enough for most Windows XP era games, as it supports DirectX 10, OpenGL 3.0, and has a gig of VRAM. Using it's a bit overkill, but it'll do the job if you're looking for a card that'll support most games without spending long periods of time studying the hardware from that era. So a LGA775 mobo which has Core2Duo support, something like 2.5-3GB of RAM (unless you're planning to use Windows XP 64 bit, but in that case I would max it out at 4), and a GTX 285 will do the trick for most, if not all XP era games. (Yes, I'm aware that 32 bit OSes have theoretical support for 4GB of RAM, but the most I've ever seen utilized by a 32 bit system with 4 gigs of RAM installed is ~3.2gb, so the extra gig of ram would be pointless in a 32 bit XP install)

Like I said, it really depends on what year range you want. For something from 2006, the Core2Duo and GPUs would be way too much. For any Windows XP rig, both of those GPUs would be out of the year range of Windows XP gaming. The GTX 460 was a 2010 card, and the HD7770 was a 2012 card. I can give hardware recommendations from 2002-2004, 2005-2007, and 2008 to 2009. Once you start getting past that, it gets fuzzy as Windows 7 was released around that time and would be better off for hardware from that era. Like I said, it heavily depends on the year range of the games you want to play on it. Keep in mind that a 2007 rig could still play games from 2002, and so on, so it depends on the newest game you want to play on it. For cases, one thing you could do is go to https://archive.org/web/ and go to tigerdirect from the era you want to see cases from. So if you want a 2006 case, you could go to the case section and find one or two, and then search that same model of case on eBay and see how much it's selling for today.

I'm almost certain that the machine you're looking at for a Windows XP build is far, far too overkill. It really depends on what year span you're wanting to play games in, but almost universally you won't need a machine of that kind of power. I have an Athlon XP build with 1.5GB of DDR memory, and it runs a lot of the games I want it to run just fine. Time-accurate parts are far less expensive than more modern ones, and you could probably build a really decent time-accurate AMD Windows XP rig for less than $200USD. Of course, I don't think these are parts you can look at with PC Part Picker. Instead, you'll have to go to eBay to find stuff like that. Here's a baseline build I'd recommend for a ~2006 Windows XP rig: Motherboard: https://www.ebay.com/itm/MSI-RS480M-Motherboard/142892286368?epid=1825421253&hash=item21450b41a0%3Ag%3AZwkAAOSw~AhbY3bJ&_sacat=0&_nkw=socket+754+motherboard&_from=R40&rt=nc&LH_TitleDesc=0 CPU: https://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-Athlon-64-3400-socket-754-desktop-CPU-2-4-GHz-ADA3400AEP4AX-NewCastle/283073888544?epid=74061465&hash=item41e884c120%3Ag%3A5XQAAOSwsB9WD~c~&_sacat=0&_nkw=socket+754+athlon+64&_from=R40&rt=nc&LH_TitleDesc=0|0 RAM: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Atech-2GB-Kit-Lot-2x-1GB-DDR-Desktop-PC3200-3200-400-400mhz-184-pin-Memory-Ram/321872623246?hash=item4af11a768e GPU: https://www.ebay.com/itm/ATI-SAPPHIRE-Radeon-X800-XL-256MB-DVI-VGA-TV-out-PCI-Express/362390591778?hash=item5460299922%3Ag%3A9QYAAOSwCyFbUOad&_sacat=0&_nkw=ATI+Radeon+X800XL+256MB&_from=R40&rt=nc&LH_TitleDesc=0|0 Of course, these are all really example pieces. They can be interchanged for roughly similar parts and get the job done the same. That build would cost something $92.61 USD, and would almost guarantee good performance for a wide, wide range of Windows XP era games, including more intensive titles such as Doom 3. Also, if you're going for a Dell pre-built, DO NOT use the Dimension 2400. It was their budget series of desktops, and as such lacks both PCI-E and AGP standards. Rather, get yourself an OptiPlex GX280 or similar model. Of course, getting a Dell Pre-built is not preferable to building your own whatsoever, in that it will be slower and harder to work with.