Anti-sleeper Pentium build

[Lapsio]

So some time ago I was posting few topics regarding my main workstation build with Threadripper and some relatively decent hardware in general (eg. one below) and imho it turned out pretty fine at the end of the day.

 

However I always used to have two PCs in Fractal cases - one main workstation and one old trash PC (which apparently was my first PC that I got from my parents back in the day). It has some sentimental value to me. I never really paid much attention to its looks and performance though. As long as it was sitting in Fractal case and didn't look out of place in my room it was fine to me. After all my previous main workstation wasn't anything spectacular on the inside either so there was no reason for this old junk to be any different.

 

However now since I was building TR workstation which had cost me arm and leg anyways and I had two Fractal Define R6 cases (since I had to buy second one from ebay just to get usb-c front panel for main workstation), I decided that well... how about I match those two machines to some degree not only on the outside but also inside... At least visually. Aaaaaand I probably took it waaaaaaay to far considering that it doesn't even have glass panel. but oh well. It was somewhat funny to build that at least XD

 

This old junk PC has MSI P4M900M2 motherboard and some old Pentium Dual Core, running at 1.6 ghz. Since I didn't want to reinstall OS (it still contains my original Windows XP that I used in elementary school) and also wanted to keep it at least somewhat related to that original PC - CPU and mobo had to stay. And that pretty much dictated color scheme of whole build because well - this motherboard is all red. Back in the day nobody cared about color of PCB so well... That's what I got. GPU was utter junk tho (gt7300) so I changed it to some old GTX580 3GB I had laying around (well I also had some 3080 laying around but I believe there are no Windows XP 32 bit drivers for that one so it was no-go). It was still a bit tricky to find last drivers that were released for Windows XP SP2 32 bit but well, it worked and worked relatively painlessly.

 

At first I didn't know I'll be doing some crazy, ridiculous build so I just put it all together using stuff I already had just like I always did before and it turned out like this:

 

Nothing fancy but it kinda struck me how ridiculous it is to put such old trash mobo in PC case that implements all those modern fancy trends like PSU shroud, HDD shroud etc. It was just so off that it stole my heart somehow. Up to point where I decided damn... I gotta do it as sleek as I can. And then it all started:

 - black PATA ribbons from ebay

 - Noctua Chromax fans

 - some old black WD PATA HDD just to add a bit more storage

 

And I got something like this as some form of checkpoint:

 

At that point I already knew I fell into this rabbit hole and I started getting the most ridiculous stuff I could. I had Noctua NH-D15 from my old workstation laying around so I contacted Noctua support whether they could send me mounting kit for LGA775. And they did. Then some Cablemod cabling to match red theme of machine, some heatsink shrouds, more red cables, black floppy drive and... it got pretty much out of hand. Unfortunately due to absolutely terrible ATX power connector placement on this mobo - standard Cablemod cables were too short and I had to additionally order some extension cables. However for some reason (I find it absolutely dumb idea but whatever) those custom Cablemod extension cables make some assumptions about your motherboard and cables are shorter on one side, determining which way cable should go. And unfortunately in this particular case it meant they should go up - over cooler. which was no go because that Noctua has like 0 clearance at the top (I even had to remove top fans since there's not enough cooler clearance for them due to how high CPU socket is placed on this mobo). So I ended up with a bit ugly cable bulge under GPU. But well, if you don't look at it too much it's not all that bad. I didn't want to waste another 100$ for perfect ATX cable considering I already spent ridiculous amount of money on this Cablemod junk. so it had to stay. Anyhow...

 

I think at this point it looks really ridiculous for something that struggles to run Oblivion due to CPU bottlenecks but as troll build - I think it does pretty good job.

 

If you think it's terrible waste of money and resources, it offends you and you feel internal pain just by looking at it - you're welcome, I'm glad I could be your cancer today xD