Theoretic Overpowered oldschool build

[Grimreaper86]

I have an idea. It's ludicrous and in my opinion, sort of hilarious. I've done a fair amount of research coming up with this build based on the one part I already have. I have a Dell Dimension 3000 that works. It has an old pentium 4 in it and I've gotten it to run windows 7 32 bit. I can't get it to run windows 10 because the processor cannot run 64 applications and the windows 10 installer; even the 32 bit versions I've found seem to require a 64 bit capable processor for installation. If anyone knows a work around for this let me know; perhaps I simply haven't found the necessary work around.

 

According to my research their does exist an socket 478 pentium 4 that can run 64 applications. This rather uncommon 64 pentium for is the model: SL7QB. It's also one of the more expensive/difficult parts to find for this insane little project.

Then I was thinking I'd replace the motherboard with this: Biostar

The front panel audio for the case has a weird connector and the only way I could figure out a way to connect it would be to get this: Creative SB0350 Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS PCI Sound Card

The Biostar motherboard has one of those weird small PCIe ports and I'm not entirely sure if it's compatible but I found this product and others like it that might allow me to use that port to insert an m.2 SSD. In addition that biostar motherboard has 2 sata ports and I have lots of old hard drives and SSDs that would be much faster and larger then the IDE drive the original computer came with. I have lots of old good quality DDR2 ram that could be used in this project.

I have some old graphics cards I could use for this project temporary that are at least in the 2gig range; but I might be willing to buy a cheap 4gig model. I may have a better PSU that could fit in the case or I might be willing to buy one if necessary. It's possible old one might suffice. I might be able to fit a newer more capable one in it though without buying it.

This is a theoretical build though and I'm not sure all of it would work together or how well it would work once assembled but I'm looking at spending somewhere between $100-150 on all these parts just to see if I can make this retro rig do some modern things. It a strange but I believe; interesting project. I have better computers. I just want to see if an old socket 478 can do something it was never expected to do with modern applications.

 

One thing I didn't take into account that I think would be necessary is some sort of quality cooler.

 

Budget (including currency): I'm currently pretty poor, going through a divorce and a bunch of other stuff going on I'd rather not get into.

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Windows 10 pro, whatever games I can push it to play

Existing Parts: Dell Dimension 3000, Lots of old good quality DDR2 ram, lots of old smaller SSDs and hard drives, lots of keyboards and mice.

 

Let me know what you think and if you have any of these parts for a reasonable price; particularly that CPU. I WILL eventually build this....but considering budgetary restraints and part availability, I have no idea when. It's just a fun little nerdy project I've been wanting to do for awhile out of curiosity more then anything. I would record the results and possibly make a video about it on youtube.

[Archer42]

The question is - why win10?

Honestly - it makes no sense. It will be disappointing, incredibly slow and useless. No modern games will run on it because they tend to require certain cpu instruction sets which will be missing. A lot of software will not run too. And i am not even sure what win10 requirements are regarding this, 32bit version, most likely, does not run for this reason too - not because of lack of 64bit support.

 

If you really want to do a retro build it would make sense to use time-appropriate OS, which would be windows XP. You can then run time-appropriate games and stuff on it, and if you buy really high end hardware from that time (which should be cheap in this case as it is not yet old enough to become truly "retro" but is already hopelessly outdated) you'll be able to see how that would have performed back then. Most people who play around with old tech find it fun.

 

nvme ssd makes no sense too. Just use cheap sata. Will be bottlenecked by other parts of the system anyway.

[Aragorn-]

 

[Grimreaper86]

8 hours ago, Archer42 said:

The question is - why win10?

Honestly - it makes no sense. It will be disappointing, incredibly slow and useless. No modern games will run on it because they tend to require certain cpu instruction sets which will be missing. A lot of software will not run too. And i am not even sure what win10 requirements are regarding this, 32bit version, most likely, does not run for this reason too - not because of lack of 64bit support.

 

If you really want to do a retro build it would make sense to use time-appropriate OS, which would be windows XP. You can then run time-appropriate games and stuff on it, and if you buy really high end hardware from that time (which should be cheap in this case as it is not yet old enough to become truly "retro" but is already hopelessly outdated) you'll be able to see how that would have performed back then. Most people who play around with old tech find it fun.

 

nvme ssd makes no sense too. Just use cheap sata. Will be bottlenecked by other parts of the system anyway.

It just sounded fun to be honest. I just wanted to see what I could get it to do. Even as it is now I've put Windows 7 on it and various forms of linux. Linux seems to get the best results so far because of how light weight it is. Windows 7 was surprisingly not terrible and despite having no graphics card in it as it is right now I got it to run Halo and Fable using proton on linux via steam. It looked like shit but it was amusing. I have a better computer for gaming. I just want to do this to see what I can push this old thing to do. I know it will have bottlenecks. If you haven't seen or heard of anyone doing anything similar to this; check out the channel Budget Builds.

[brob]

Your Pentium 4 needs to be a Prescott core. Wilamette and Northwood cores do not support the necessary instruction set.

 

I believe Prescott used LGA775 sockets, Northwood  LGA478, and Willamette LGA423.

[Aragorn-]

Very limited 478 models supported x64, looking at wikipedia, specifically the SL7QB and SL7Q8 sku's are the only ones.

The rest of the x64 supporting chips are LGA775.

 

Older versions of Windows 10 ran on 32bit machines though, so thats another option if you just want to run 10, rather than specifically the latest build.