My computers...

[rare]

I thought some of you might like to see some of the retro pc's I have owned/built/still own

This wont be in any order as such, but I will update the thread over time as I have quite a few to share. Sometimes I stick specifically to a certain date and try to be as original as possible, other times I am a bit more liberal with some components.

I am starting with one of my favourite current builds which I have owned for a fair few years and made various changes along the way (more details to come including benchmark scores):

FX-60
Currently Owned
Original era : Peak 2006 build, last of the golden AMD era before Conroe/8800 GTX came along and changed the game forever...
Specification:

• Case : Antec P160
• Case fans : Akasa 120mm Vegas Green LED
• PSU : Corsair TX-650M Gold (with Akasa 120mm dual bearing green LED fan)
• CPU : Athlon FX-60 dual core 2.6Ghz (January 2006)
• CPU Cooler : Zalman CNPS 9700 NVIDIA SLI Edition
• Motherboard : A8N32-SLI Deluxe Socket 939 nforce4 SLI (Late 2005)
• Memory : 2X1GB DDR 400 Corsair XMS Pro
• GPU: SLI NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTO 512MB (October 2006)
• Sound Card : Creative X-Fi Titanium
• Boot Drive : 1TB Samsung 860 Evo SSD
• Storage Drive : 2TB WD Black 7200rpm SATA HDD
• Software : Windows XP Pro SP3 32bit - NVIDIA drivers 175.19
• Other : Samsung DVD drive, Sony floppy drive, Akasa fan controller, green cable wrap, green illuminated molex extensions, green round floppy cable.

Benchmarks:
3DMark 2001 Score: 31762
3DMark 2003 Score: 33125
3DMark 2005 Score: 13331
3DMark 2006 Score: 8872

Athlon 3200+ XP
Currently Owned
Original era : Peak 2003 build
Specification:

• Case : Coolermaster Wavemaster Blue Edition (I machine polished the exterior panels are the paint came up brilliantly, its a stunning colour)
• Case fans : Akasa 80mm Blue LED (2x front, 1x rear)
• PSU : Seasonic G-Series Modular 550W Gold - Overkill! Entire system draws around 280w under load (with Akasa 120mm dual bearing Blue LED fan)
• CPU : AMD Athlon 3200+ XP Barton Core Socket 462 2.2Ghz / 400MHz FSB (May 2003)
• CPU Cooler : Gigabyte G-Power Pro (native 462 fixing) with fan controller
• Motherboard :Abit NF7-S Rev 2.00 Socket 462 - nVidia nForce2 Ultra400 chipset
• Memory : 2X1GB DDR 400 Corsair XMS Pro
• GPU: nVidia GeForce FX 5900 Ultra 256MB + Arctic NV Silencer 4 cooler (October 2003)
• Sound Card : Onboard 'Soundstorm' (A pretty high end solution for the time)
• Boot Drive : 2x 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm SATA
• Software : Windows XP Pro SP3 32bit / Windows 2000 SP4 dual boot - nVidia drivers 61.77
• Other : SONY DVD drive, Sony floppy drive, blue cable wrap, unbranded GPU cooler in PCI slot, blue cold cathode, blue round floppy cable, blue case thumbscrews.

Benchmarks:
3DMark 2001 Score 5900 Ultra : 15487
3DMark 2003 Score 5900 Ultra : 5725
3DMark 2005 Score 5900 Ultra : 1197
3DMark 2006 Score 5900 Ultra : 357

Benchmarks:
3DMark 2001 Score 9800 Pro : TBC
3DMark 2003 Score 9800 Pro : TBC
3DMark 2005 Score 9800 Pro : TBC
3DMark 2006 Score 9800 Pro : TBC

 

[rare]

Thanks guys! Nothing fancy done with the pictures just took them in a room with a skylight so lots of natural light. Only issue is it means lugging the machines up stairs which is hard work haha. Used an old camera of mine, just snapped and uploaded no editing or anything as I’m not clever enough for that.

It’s one of my favourite systems, I was 20 in 2006 - pretty much dream spec for me back then but I couldn’t afford it. To be fair even now some of those components are becoming increasingly rare and expensive. Saw an FX-60 sell for £400 odd on eBay recently!

My next system to upload is an Athlon XP Barton 3200+ with a GeForce 5900 Ultra - peak 2003. Might get round to taking some pictures later.

 

[rare]

It's spotless! How did you keep it so clean?

Severe case of OCD I think mate haha.

 

[rare]

Thanks for all your kind words guys I really appreciate it! I have added some information and pictures for my Barton build. Some of you guys will recall that in 2003 there was an epic battle going on between ATI and Nvidia. I will be adding some results for benchmarks with various cards in due time as I have a fair few of that era. For now I have included a few for the 5900 Ultra which is in the system currently. Its amusing to see that by 2006 the 5900 Ultra, the flagship card from 3 years prior was basically a dead end for new games by that point.

PC gaming Hardware magazine from August 2003 did a battle between the 5900 Ultra and the 9800 Pro and they said the 5900 Ultra was the clear winner, and suggested it would be the better equipped card for the future. My memory may be a bit hazy but I am pretty sure that turned out to be completely incorrect and the Radeon's fared better as time went on...

 

[rare]

Every single PC build felt unique.

I feel like there was more character for sure back then.

 

[rare]

Thank you man! I have more to share at some point when I can get round to it…

 

[rare]

Thanks for the comments guys, a good nudge to me to get round to take pictures of the other systems…

OMG an NF7-S!

Such a great board. IMO it’s probably the best 462 board there was. It’s a real shame Abit aren’t with us anymore.

Also, how do you get your Floppy and IDE cables to be so compact?

I just buy aftermarket round cables, have to scour eBay and they occasionally come up in colours. You can bend the flat ones in to more of a round shape but it’s a bit of a pain.

How come you don't see aftermarket GPU coolers like we had back then? They really improved the cooling. I'm guessing the standard ones caught up in quality?

I think that’s exactly it, they are just generally better now. If you look at even mid range cards they have substantial heatsinks a lot of the time. Most fans on graphics cards back then were so small they ran at stupid speeds and often didn’t last more than a few years.

 

[rare]

Pretty sure one of them is a dual cpu AMD setup

Need more details mate that sounds awesome

I’ve got a dual Opteron 285 system I will probably share next. It’s effectively dual FX-60’s (or quad FX-55 if you will) with an AGP slot! Madness.

 

[rare]

The motherboard is a Tyan S2460, think it was called Tyan Tiger, cant recall what the CPUs are, they are not MP though.

Windows was very unstable on it and ended up with old flavour of Linux.

Oh awesome, socket 462 board! Mines a Tyan S2875. It’s been a bit of a challenging setup, the SATA controller is incredibly fussy about newer drives, and I struggled to get it running with two CPU’s and 4GB memory at CL2 400Mhz so had to settle for CL3.

It’s a cool novelty to have effectively four cores of AMD FX goodness though.

 

[rare]

thanks mate much appreciated!!