AM3+ Sleeper build

[asand1]

I have recently acquired an old Millennia PC tower that housed a Pentium 4/Asus custom system from the days of Windows 2000. I will be swapping the M3970AM-HP(Angelica2) motherboard and  AMD HD 7450 I receive from whiteGloveReview, along with my FX 4300, and 8GB of RAM. Eventually I will upgrade to an FX 8320E or 8350, and likely another GTX 960 (or other highest end card without UEFI prerequisite.)

 

The tower

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[TheCamba]

Bring on the sleeper!

[Nena Trinity]

Just make sure you get a decent board that can handle a FX 8-core later!

 

FX-4300 to FX-8300 is a worthy upgrade unlike FX-6300 to FX-8300...

[vorticalbox]

15 minutes ago, Nena360 said:

Just make sure you get a decent board that can handle a FX 8-core later!

 

FX-4300 to FX-8300 is a worthy upgrade unlike FX-6300 to FX-8300...

totally this. I would say a fx990 chipset and 8+2 power parse.

 

I have a gigabyte ud3

[asand1]

Drilled out the rivets and removed the HDD bay.

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Drilled two more holes to properly mount the Antec Earthwatts 500W PSU

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Mounted an exhaust fan in place of the empty toolless housing.

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[Nena Trinity]

40 minutes ago, vorticalbox said:

totally this. I would say a fx990 chipset and 8+2 power parse.

 

I have a gigabyte ud3

Very nice, minimum that I consider good is MSI 970 Gaming or ASUS 970 Aura! (most 990FXs will be better that is for sure.)

[vorticalbox]

my problem is air flow over the vms, I have a beefy heat sink but since I have a h100i I have next to no air flow down there in my switch 810.

 

I will probably fine some way to mount a fan down there.

[Heesleemer]

1 hour ago, vorticalbox said:

my problem is air flow over the vms, I have a beefy heat sink but since I have a h100i I have next to no air flow down there in my switch 810.

 

I will probably fine some way to mount a fan down there.

you can probably figure out a way to mount a fan on the cpu block. Cryorig AIOs have it 

[Tech_Dreamer]

Wait a minute , This isn't a build log, it's a cemetery

[asand1]

Pet cemetery maybe. Hope it doesn't kill me after it is risen again. :-/

[asand1]

This PC didn't have a reset switch, so here's what I did.

 

I removed the fascia and door from the 3.5 floppy and epoxied it all together, and then to the inside of the front panel.

 

 

Then I epoxied a switch to the inside of the floppy fascia where the floppy eject button would strike the switch.

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I also used an old USB plug too consolidate all the front panel leads into a single plug, using a pin-out found on the web.

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[asand1]

I changed my mind because I wanted a clean look while having HD audio jacks and USB 3.0. I will pick up a cheap USB 3.0 case, but in the meantime I put the HP motherboard and FX-4300 in a case that I was going to scrap. Currently I have two 3-pin 90mm fans mounted with the HP front panel scapped on.

 

oooh nekkid!!

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[Snooli]

Nice. Gigabyte had 970 board with 8+2 power phases, it was even blue, so it would match the build perfectly. It was also very cheap.

Also, why don't you want an UEFI GPU?

[SpaceGhostC2C]

On 8/19/2016 at 8:32 PM, vorticalbox said:

my problem is air flow over the vms, I have a beefy heat sink but since I have a h100i I have next to no air flow down there in my switch 810.

 

I will probably fine some way to mount a fan down there.

I've used a vented expansion slot cover to ghetto-mount a 92mm fan over the VRM heatsink on the exhaust fan, holding the fan with 2 rubber mounts. I'm sure there is a more elegant way to achieve the same:

 

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(picture isn't great nor aimed at showing the fan, but I hope it's useful).

 

Sorry for digressing, OP. I like the spirit of resurrecting older parts and make them functional, but let's see what you updated project brings  

[asand1]

Today I picked up an HP Pavilion Elite m9400f with a Radeon 3650, Phenom X4 9750, 8GB of DDR2, and a 750GB HDD. 

 

I swapped the HDD and a second DVD burner into the FX-4300 and installed Windows 10 Home. Machine is working nicely and I'm posting from it now.

[asand1]

OK, I decided to Stay with the Sleeper build concept, although with an OEM HP motherboard and FX 4300, you can't really call it a sleeper. I installed the  M3970AM-HP Angelica2 mother board into the HP Pavilion Elite m9400f case.

 

 I opened up the plastic housing for the front IO and replaced the USB 2.0 ports with 3.0.

 

Clean OEM look using parts that didnt cost me a penny.

 

[TheCamba]

5 hours ago, asand1 said:

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That cable management, though!

[Besix]

Nice build, kinda reminds me of mine ages ago.

I had an old Packard Bell case full of old hardware stickers on the front... (Pentium 4, DDR, Sapphire X800XT, a standard PB sticker with shitty specs,...)

 

Going to LAN-parties with it was plain old fun: they demanded to know what was inside.

(AMD Phenom II X6 1100T, 16GB of RAM and 9800 GTX+ when these parts were still concidered to be good.)

 

[asand1]

Yeah, this case is alright. I might hang on to it and build a high end gaming rig in a couple of years.

[asand1]

46 minutes ago, Besix said:

Nice build, kinda reminds me of mine ages ago.

I had an old Packard Bell case full of old hardware stickers on the front... (Pentium 4, DDR, Sapphire X800XT, a standard PB sticker with shitty specs,...)

 

Going to LAN-parties with it was plain old fun: they demanded to know what was inside.

(AMD Phenom II X6 1100T, 16GB of RAM and 9800 GTX+ when these parts were still concidered to be good.)

 

Sounds like fun. I've only played in 1 PC LAN party (COD1), but I used to attend LAN parties regularly to play Halo 1 on Xbox OG.

[Vamprie]

I used an old HP Compaq case for my AMD FM2 sleeper rig  I think that it turned out pretty nice

[TheCamba]

It looks super clean which is always nice.  Great job.

[Vamprie]

On 2016-10-03 at 3:58 PM, TheCamba said:

It looks super clean which is always nice.  Great job.

Thenks Camba