Creation of the Windows XP Rig

[FluffHarding]

Decided to Create a XP Gaming rig Purely to Run older games that will not function on Windows 10.

 

Started this off by looking for either a Second hand system or individual components.

 

I did find bits and pieces but did not purchase until i was sure but then i Found a system on Gumtree which was up for sale for £20, Seller told me it powered up and would beep but nothing would display.

 

Decided to go for it, Collected the system along with some other bitas and pieces, Brought it home and set about seeing what i had for my money.

 

I know the seller told me it needed a clean but did not pay attention until i got it home.

 

 

 

As you can tell this PC has not been cleaned in a good few years.

Before i would attempt to power it on my mission was to strip it apart and clean each component and bench test it to see what was good and what was bad.

 

 

Pics before teardown:

 

 

Not seen any sort of case lighting like this before  but would clean up and see if worked and would use it temporally

 

 

Removed GPU to then see a Capacitor had fallen out which would pin point me to think this is why it dont display.

 

 

What i thought was add in cards turned out to be just plugged to the headers on the Motherboard, did not intend to use these

 

[lookpuppy]

I want to hear more on this when your done cleaning it and replacing stuff! Good luck

[FluffHarding]

Tooles Drive Mounting system had extra rails clipped under drive cage.

 

One of my biggest shocks was removing the Processor fan to reveal this i have never seen anything so dirty before.

Classic AMD Heat sink removal that had been applied for a long time

2 GB Coarsir DDR Ram

[kelvinhall05]

Yummy.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Even my XP machine didn't have that much dust

 

What Athlon is that? Mine has a 64 X2 3800+(and yes, it came out with the heatsink as well haha)

 

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

*insert vomit-chan meme here*

 

Though I kind of want to do an old school build. Then I remembered Windows XP in VirtualBox emulates a GeFrce 6800 pretty well.

 

EDIT: I bet the person smoked. The only time I've seen computers like that is from smokers.

[lookpuppy]

How much storage on that hdd? Also making a youtube video on this would be insane! I have a really wierd attraction to videos of people cleaning pcs start to finish! If you do this i would so subscribe!

[Zeko Simon]

This is amazing

[FluffHarding]

Interesting design on the motherboard tray for such an old case

 

All Components removed to reveal an extremley dirty case, Set about cleaning the non electrical components with regular washing up liquid and hot water

 

 

This is all the crap just scraped off the case fans and processor fan.

 

 

[lookpuppy]

Youtube video!

[FluffHarding]

Notherboard blown down and dust and crap wiped over and left to dry

 

 

Processor installed Along with a new application of thermal compound and freshly cleaned Heatsink

 

 

[Ansger]

[lookpuppy]

MORE!

[lookpuppy]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/ATI-Radeon-X800-256MB-PCIe-Graphic-Card-109-A31900-00-K3856-Refurbished/182776646211?hash=item2a8e564a43:g:uucAAOSwwVpZwV-J

 

i its not an 800 but an x800

[FluffHarding]

 

My Ghetto Test Bench (Could not use my Desk due to it having a load of stuff on where im having to pack the room up my PC's are in to move into smaller room so my daughter can have the bigger room)

Had a few issues 1st was no power to the system ended up being the Power supply that came with the system, changed that for a spare cheap one i had spare, eneded with system powering on but no display, Changed GPU for a spare workstation one i had lying around which i knew was working but still would not display or post beep, Removed all HDD and optical drive and still no post ended up being one of the sticks of ram was dead and so was the GPU, Hard disk was very noisy but was reading ok and was installed with Windows Vista, So not bad for  the price, little gutted the GPU Did not work but have another in mind to use.

 

 

Next Job was to make a start on a temporary rebuild so i could get the system up and running in the case.

 

 

Pretty Much all the components i want to use with extras to come, PSU was changed for a 80+ FSP 500w and GPU is a AMD 6950 2GB now i know thats Overkill for windows XP but its all i have lying around working that is anything decent for gaming. Also putting in a 30GB SSD for booting a Tempary 80GB Sata hard disk 7200RPM and a 5400RPM 500GB hard disk for data etc

 

 

Hard Disk too less mounting

 

[FluffHarding]

Powered on for first time.

 

 

Now this is a Temporary Build, I Plan to pull back apart in the summer to do some minor mods to the case.

 

You may notice im using a PCI Sound card this is because i run into som issues trying to get the onboard AC-97 audio working could not get to the bottom as to why it would not function so for now a PCI Audio card is used.

 

 

Specs:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra 9 Socket 939

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+

Ram: 2GB Total 1GB is Corsair PC3200 200mhz + 1GB Kingston PC3200 200mhz

GPU: XFX AMD Raedon HD 6950 2GB

HDD: 30GB SSD Boot Drive

 

Have not used the system much at the momment but seems to be running ok, do get a CPU Fan error beep now and then on cold boot and see the fan is not turning but then springs into life. Also have some issues running games from the SSD where either they fail to boot or they run like crap something i need to look into.

[lookpuppy]

Might wanna upgrade to like 4gb of ram just for fun

[FluffHarding]

28 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Even my XP machine didn't have that much dust

 

What Athlon is that? Mine has a 64 X2 3800+(and yes, it came out with the heatsink as well haha)

 

 

Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2ghz

 

28 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

*insert vomit-chan meme here*

 

Though I kind of want to do an old school build. Then I remembered Windows XP in VirtualBox emulates a GeFrce 6800 pretty well.

 

EDIT: I bet the person smoked. The only time I've seen computers like that is from smokers.

Yes from a smoker as it absolutely stunk of Nicotine

 

29 minutes ago, Fruitsnacc said:

How much storage on that hdd? Also making a youtube video on this would be insane! I have a really wierd attraction to videos of people cleaning pcs start to finish! If you do this i would so subscribe!

250gb but very noisy when accessed but Crystal disk info reported it back as good. Kinda wished i did video it all but im not the best Narrators lol 

 

14 minutes ago, Fruitsnacc said:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/ATI-Radeon-X800-256MB-PCIe-Graphic-Card-109-A31900-00-K3856-Refurbished/182776646211?hash=item2a8e564a43:g:uucAAOSwwVpZwV-J

 

i its not an 800 but an x800

Good to know as i have not looked at putting in a more "Period correct" GPU as of yet but the 6950 is way to overkill and some games are not happy running on it due to excessive amount of Vram

 

 

[FluffHarding]

1 minute ago, Fruitsnacc said:

Might wanna upgrade to like 4gb of ram just for fun

I have the Ram here and have tried 4gb but once again ran into issues with some games reporting back with not enough system memory because there was too much Ram ?!?!?!?!

 

Basically the sweet spot seems to be 2gb, not run into anything as of yet that is struggling with 2gb's Ram

[lookpuppy]

5 minutes ago, FluffHarding said:

Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2ghz

 

Yes from a smoker as it absolutely stunk of Nicotine

 

250gb but very noisy when accessed but Crystal disk info reported it back as good. Kinda wished i did video it all but im not the best Narrators lol 

 

Good to know as i have not looked at putting in a more "Period correct" GPU as of yet but the 6950 is way to overkill and some games are not happy running on it due to excessive amount of Vram

 

 

Ahh i dont care about narration 

[FluffHarding]

2 minutes ago, Fruitsnacc said:

Ahh i dont care about narration 

Come the Summer its being torn back down for some mods to the case and change out some of the components.

[aezakmi]

Oh man those 80mm blue LED fans were great, and the cold cathodes  makes me remember my first build in 2004

[FluffHarding]

1 minute ago, aezakmi said:

Oh man those 80mm blue LED fans were great, and the cold cathodes  makes me remember my first build in 2004

Yer the 80mm LED fans i had in my First XP Gaming machine back in the day but these are struggling one of them is a tad noisy where the bearings are dirty.

 

 

[lookpuppy]

I demand more!

[FluffHarding]

13 hours ago, Fruitsnacc said:

I demand more!

More to come soon