Retro Build in a Focus G Mini

[SALEEN961]

I just finished building my wife's new gaming PC for a grand total of $216.23, the most expensive part was the case because she wanted it to be pretty, and the second most expensive part was the new PSU, because I didn't want to deal with troubleshooting old hardware running on an old PSU. The system is running XP 32-bit and after tinkering for about a week I have my overclocks pretty much dialed in.

 

The 3GHz 800MHz FSB Pentium E5700 has been overclocked to 3.45GHz with a 1200MHz FSB which isn't bad to the G41 chipset. The ram is actually underclocked to 1200MHz with super tight timings and I really liking the performance of 1200MHz CL6 compared to the 1333MHz CL9 the DIMM defaults to even if this is pretty slow for DDR3. So far it's running all the games it was built to run maxed out and never dropping below 60FPS so overall we're pretty happy.

 

Let me know what you guys think of this retro build in a modern case.

 

BUILD SHEET:

$41.99 Asus P5G41T-M LX Plus Motherboard
$63.59 EVGA Supernova 550W G3 PSU
$24.37 Inland 120GB SATA SSD
$63.58 Fractal Design Focus G Mini Black Case
$12.71 SATA to 3 x 4-Pin PWM Sleeved Fan Power Adapter Cable
$ 9.99 Asus Wireless PCE-N13 Wireless Network Card
FREE   Intel Stock Cooler
FREE   HIS 1GB HD4670 GPU
FREE   2GB Kingston DDR3 1333Mhz
FREE   Pentium E5700

FREE   CDRW Drive

FREE   Corsair SP120 Fans (left overs from other builds)

 

[MyName0602]

This is cool. I have a focus G. It's nice but cable management is a pain.

[SALEEN961]

2 hours ago, MyName0602 said:

This is cool. I have a focus G. It's nice but cable management is a pain.

Yeah it is kind of tricky in this case, without a basement or a lot of room behind the motherboard tray it was a little tricky to hide everything, the front fan cables are probably the worst thing to deal with, there's just no where to put them other than out in the open.

 

Overall I am very happy with the build quality of the case, it didn't fall short of any of my expectations.