2006 nostalgia Build

[Shlouski]

Today I will be starting the log on my 2006 build.

 

I ran across an advert for a Thermaltake shark PC case and with it being so hard to find cases from this era I knew I had to go get it, but unfortunately it meant going on a trip to the north of Tenerife to an area I didn't know to get it.

 

 

It's not I bad condition considering it was manufactured the best part of 20 years ago, but it did need a bit of a clean.

 

 For the motherboard I got an Asus P5W DH DELUXE which was a great board in its day, it should help are CPU reach its full potential.

 

 

On the topic of CPU's, I wanted a X6800 but people want way too much money, I will keep my eye out for one that is reasonably priced. For now it will be going with the E6700 which was still a very good CPU, and of course it can be overclocked.

 

To overclock the CPU the temperatures will need to be kept in check, so I will be needing a decent cooler, welcome the Zalman CNPS8000. 

 

I found one, new old stock:

 

 

I came with a little tube of thermal paste which is common, but I thought it wise to use some made a little more recently 

 

Now moving on to the ram. It can be a pain to find out exactly what modules were released and when and even harder to get your hands on them, because of this I try to go with modules that are similar to ones available at the time in regards to their style and performance. In September 2006 corsair released the Dominator Twin2X2048-8888C4DF ram kit, these modules ran at 4-4-4-12, 2.4V 1111MHz and had the Dual-path Heat Xchange Cooling heatsinks on them, I wasn't able to get these, but I was able to get 4x1gb sticks of corsair CM2X1024-8500C5D running at 5-5-5-15, 2.4v 1066MHz, as this ram looks the part and is actually a little slower than what was available at the time I think it's fair to use in a 2006 build.

 

 

http://images.bit-tech.net/content_images/2006/09/corsair_dominator_8888c4df/dominator2.jpg

 

 

 

Now lets move on to the GPU.

 

I can't believe I actually found a working example in good condition for a reasonable price:

 

 

I really wish I had a 7950 GX2 back in 2006, I hope I can find another one in the future as it would be interesting to mess around with quad sli.

 

These parts aren't so power hungry by todays standards so a new 650w Bequiet PSU will be more than capable of powering this machine.

 

 

And for the best news, it all powers up and works 

 

 

I need to get some pci slot covers and at some point in the future I hope to take the case apart and give it a lick of paint, but for now this will do nicely.

[jaslion]

Nice build I like it.

 

Since this board supports a e8600 maybe you could do the fun thing and push that to 5ghz like multiple people managed to do? It's possible on air and a lot of e8600's are rebranded e8700 picks since the e8700 was basically a paper launch and barely put into circulation.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

cooler looks a little weak so thats abit of a concern for oc

 

as for the ram i assume those are micron d9gkx or atleast d9gmh based considering the bin (likely the former as its a relatively high bin), should be capable of 1300+ and afaik the high bin d9 kits that use 2.4v are warrantied at that voltage so if you want a conservative max then its 2.4v though id personally continue pushing past 3v if it kept scaling

 

no clue how high that asus board goes so you might need a voltmod to reach those high volts which afaik was also somewhat common in this time period with ppl volmodding other 975x boards for higher voltage ranges alongside ppl using pencils to get llc but id rather have a somewhat droopy vcore so i can use abit less voltage under load

 

vcore should be good to atleast 1.7v as thats 65nm but im pretty sure youll run into cooling issues before 1.5v, same thing goes for the northbridge but atleast you can point a fan at it and the vrm heatsink

 

your board might also benifit from a bios mod with a better ebb which i can make (ebb swap to maximus ii formula, 535 -> 570 fsb boot on my p5q) but unless those boards are common or you can find another 975x to use as a test dummy id rather not just so you dont brick your board since that plcc32 bios chip (located beside the 2nd to lowest pci slot) are very annoying to get a programmer for, i think theres a usb programmer that supports it but i forgot the name and looking up plcc32 just yeilds some really expensive programmers

 

i also highly reccomend getting a pci debug card usually marketed as pc analyzer as thatll help alot with both troubleshooting and overclocking, once the settings are dialed in you can just take it off so it doesnt ruin the build, speeds up overclocking tremendously and i despise boards that dont have postcode

[Aldread000]

Nice build classic