The Horse You Rode In On, a Look Back In Time

[YellowDragon]

On the forums I have seen alot of people discussing their first experiences with building their own PCs some young and some old. Some remember the days when CPUs never came in Chips but came in slide in Riser/Daughter cards complete with integrated heatsinks, some remember the days when processors did not need heatsinks and more remember the days when MOLEX and AGP ruled as the standard for graphics cards and powering more then just fancy case lights and peripherals. Times when building your own PC was considered far more Taboo then the easier to put together systems of today and a color matching system with matching components was a completely foreign idea as every card, dimm of ram and motherboard came in any color of the rainbow and sometimes looked like a box of really shiny lego bricks. The same can be said of cable management as many of the cases on the market did not have a place to route cables behind the motherboard tray and the most PSUs were top mounted. The idea of multi-monitor eyefinity and surround was completely unheard of and liquid cooling was extremely rare.

 

 

Now to continue this trip down memory lane, I would like to show my first rig that i completely built from the ground up. The first computer I ever use was the commodore 64 as my dad was also a big tech geek back in the day. I built my first computer when I was 14 and had been saving for my own build by mowing lawns and saving every dime I made for my allowance for 2 years, My original budget i had to work with was $600. I went with the Intel 775 socket and the new Wolfdale processors that just hit the market. I paired it with a basic gigabyte motherboard and the newly released 8800GT that was setting the video card market on fire at the time as the premier mid range card.

 

Here was my original specs:

 

CPU: Intel Core 2 duo E7200 Wolfdale

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L

RAM: OCZ Platinum 8500 4x 1gb at 1066Mhz

GPU: PNY Nvidia 8800GT

Hard Disk: 360Gb Seagate barracuda 5200RPM

PSU: Antec Basiq 500w 

Case: GMC R4 Bulldozer

 

 

In its day it was a pretty solid build, by no means extreme or high end but this little desktop just kept rolling with the punches and served me well all the way through high school and was finally decommissioned as a email machine for my parents to replace the Pentium II system that they refused to give up on. It still works like the first day I put it together and has never given me a single problem, however all computers reach the end of their usage lifespan, after much complaining I built my parents a new computer out of spare parts I had lying around, I saw them taking this desktop out to the trash and I managed to stop them, they wanted to throw it away as they thought it was useless and old the same way they saw my NES when I got the Xbox when it first came out ( they threw away my nes system and over 45 games for it all because they thought it was old, even though it all still worked). i managed to rescue my beloved desktop from their evil clutches. I got it back and it was a shadow of its former self, caked in dust and all the filters and heatsinks were all clogged, I thought it would have died a long time ago with how much dust was in there. The case was still in great shape as the desktop was shoved under a table in a far corner, it was powered on 24/7 for the 2 -1/2 year that my parents used it, so the case was unmarred and in perfect condition as I originally gave it to them.

 

I decided that i could not get rid of it as it has sentimental value, I have decided to turn it back to what it once was, the ultimate windows XP gaming machine so I can play some classic games that my modern FX 8150 and 4x HD 7970s refuse to run. After all the least I can do is give it a new lease on life for how well this machine has served me. However i feel I should make some changes as the harddrive is on its last legs (loud clicking) and so is the old powersupply, therefore over the next few months i am going to source some of the original top of the line components from the early dual core era and truly make the ultimate retro gaming PC. This project is going to be fairly slow going as I am going to have to hunt down very old components in working order and for a cheap price so it could take awhile. I am going to set a budget of $200 as this PC will still have more grunt then most HPTCs out there.

 

 

Planned new parts:

New Psu

New 7200Rpm hard drive

New Socket 775 Board

Planned Processor: Intel X6800 Extreme Edition

Planned Video Cards: 2x 8800 Ultra ( these are going to be a pain to find at a reasonable price)

Planned PSU: ????? Want to souce a classic PSU, failing that a modern era PSU that has the same aesthetics of older PSUs

 

Here are some pics of my venerable rescued RIG after some cleaning (still quite dirty).

 

Oh you guys are going to get a kick out of this case, I've seen it many times in the ugliest case thread, i think im the only person on earth that like the look of this case and actually bought one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here check this out the CD drive is mounted Vertically to make this case as compact as possible. i wish a modern manufacturer would take note of some of the design choices.

 

 

Those with queasy stomachs when it comes to bad cable management should look away, this case predates cable management as there is no routing behind the motherboard tray and there is no taking the other side panel off the case as its welded to the case itself. There are no cable tie downs, no cable sleeves, nada, zip, zilch when it comes to tidy cables in this case.

 

Oh to have the days back when High end single slot GPUs were still around

 

 

Look at the rainbow of colors, yep thats right matching components were a completely foreign thought in this bygone era of PCs.

 

 

For its time this case was really forward thinking it was a ATX mini tower were you could put a high end system in something no larger then a large shoebox and this was one of the few cases that had dustfilters.

 

 

The craziness of this case continues with two 80mm fan mounts with a 120mm adapter Frankensteined onto it.

 

Wow I forgot to take the platic film off this GPU the sticker surface still looks brand new.

here is a picture of my 8800GT

 

 

I hope you all enjoyed this little trip down memory lane, I will post more pictures as I work to update this little beauty so keep a watch on the thread.

 

[CoolBeans]

If this is a first build thread this has already been posted.

[BgG286]

If this is a first build thread this has already been posted.

This seems more like a build log than a "post your first system" thread.

[YellowDragon]

If this is a first build thread this has already been posted.

 

If you read the post it states that Im going to upgrade this little tower to the high end components of the old socket 775 Conroe Series, I just thought like writing a lengthy intro as this rig means alot to me. Its a oldie gaming PC upgrade for the sake of making the best system possible with components from that era in PCs. I thought that the log deserved a worthy intro with some imagery. 

 

So now the question is should I wait for 9xxx series before upgrading it XD?

[YellowDragon]

Tear it all down for cleaning and then waiting for the new parts:

 

 

 

[Axis]

oh man!!!!!! nothing wrong with a C2D... !!! ^_^

 

i love the "story line" hehehe :lol:

 

back in the days Antec , Thermaltake , Enermax and Silverstone were the big boys in Power Supplys

 

!!! great topic man!!!

[Nicktrance]

oh man!!!!!! nothing wrong with a C2D... !!! ^_^

 

i love the "story line" hehehe :lol:

 

back in the days Antec , Thermaltake , Enermax and Silverstone were the big boys in Power Supplys

 

!!! great topic man!!!

 

and Seasonic, but they mostly served as OEM to some of the companies you mentioned. "back in the days" isn't really that long ago though :P.

[YellowDragon]

and Seasonic, but they mostly served as OEM to some of the companies you mentioned. "back in the days" isn't really that long ago though :P.

you can say "back in the days" when it comes to computers as computers from 5-6 years ago are considered ancient and heavily out dated. Somone needs to come up with the concept of a "computer year" much like "dog years" as in "computer years" 5-6 can back considered ancient where as to a person thats not that long, considering technology advances in leaps and bounds in the timespan of months rather than years :D. For instance this system im working with is now 5 generations old in terms of processors compared to haswell :P

[Axis]

exactly! 5 years is a lot on computer terms! my every day PC is a C2Duo, exactly 5 years! thats why i said nothing wrong with them ^^

 

offtopic: to be honest and i dont feel the need to upgrade yet... since my GPU is dx10.1 i can still run every game on max settings... so far :P

 

but back to your build! a cpu cooler from that time would be cool haswell, like a zalman alcu or a thermalright slk! =D

[Theknight42]

man i remember all of this stuff my first build was a pentium 4 with 4 gig of ram and a geforce 5500 GT

[Nicktrance]

you can say "back in the days" when it comes to computers as computers from 5-6 years ago are considered ancient and heavily out dated. Somone needs to come up with the concept of a "computer year" much like "dog years" as in "computer years" 5-6 can back considered ancient where as to a person thats not that long, considering technology advances in leaps and bounds in the timespan of months rather than years :D. For instance this system im working with is now 5 generations old in terms of processors compared to haswell :P

 

Yeah, I remember when games like the original Crysis came out and everybody was trying to build a rig that can max it out and graphics card manufacturers were going crazy releasing new cards to keep up with games.

 

Unfortunately that probably will not be as true 5 years in the future :(. Attention has definitely moved on the mobile side of computing (a smartphone now would be ancient in 3 years). I mean I bet a mid range PC with, say, a current gen i5  and 7870/660ti won't be considered ancient in 5 years time because of how much slower PCs are improving in the past few years.

[Raboo]

love the case jk

[YellowDragon]

love the case jk

It would be a bit Ironic to put a bulldozer build in it :P , would be even funnier if the new 9xxx reries from amd goes for the new naming convention of R9- XXXX. Then I could say I have a R4 case with an R9 in it XD

[megadarkwood]

THAT CASE! KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!

Nice build BTW

[Jz1]

The only components I remembered from my Old computer 2008-2012 R.I.P was:

 

Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 2.8Ghz

DDR2 Ram 4GB 800mhz

Gigabyte 7600GT

7200.11 Seagate 320GB ATA

Case and power supply were those cheap Chinese ones.

[Jumper118]

i can't wait to do a 775 rig. this one looks great already.  :D