I have only talked about my first self built desktop a few times before. I haven't talked about it TOO much other than it was a pentium 4 and that I hacked it. You guys have seen me even talk about the specific machines before, HP\CompaQ D510 flatbeds.
These ugly fucks
Now, the original specs were....
P4 Prescott Socket 478 (I think?) @ 2.8 GHZ with active HT enabled (through bios wizardry... On the early models they did not have this but it could be activated with some bios updates, however it inhibited the multiple HDD capabilities on the machines I had access to). For the record, I needed this chip because the chip previous to it was a gen 2, same socket, 1.4 GHZ processor. Had no upclock, ran hot as shit. The chip I replaced it with was a major improvement, as you can figure.
2 GB Patriot PC2700 333 - 446 MHZ ram. I can technically put 3 in it but it isn't happy about it.
2X Modded Seagate UltraIDE V 40 GB HDD's. I have piles of these and have rewired them over the years as I went and as I needed to because.... I had this machine from 2009-2010 till 2015/ early 2016.
ATI 9600 Pro (could overclock it if I wanted to but never did). This card was a later on upgrade I tacked on that was an upgrade from the Intel GMA825 chip built in. The first time I played Minecraft was on the original GPU and the original CPU. The GPU upgrade and CPU upgrade too that experience from 10 FPS lowest settings to the highest settings possible on 32 bit machines in java at about 80 FPS. This is one of the reasons I have a fondness of 9X00 ATI GPU's and always will snatch them if I see them for sale or in bins.
The stock power supply was never replaced. Had heat issues, was replaced 2 times, fans always died.
Had a CD\DVD write all drive that has since died.
The motherboard was replaced once because I scattered the bios everywhere and blew up the board hacking it. Its just the stock 2002 HP board. Oh and it had a wireless card.
Stock heatsink and fan setup. This cannot be replaced.
Now during the time of using this machine I had to come up with ways to keep it cool. I took the cover off, not only from heat issues, but because I eventually had to when I put the 9600 PRO in. When the hard drives started chirping and exploding, I noticed they were actually getting too hot as well. The motors would grind from the heat because of where they were placed in the confined spaces of the case. So, I placed them in an easy to access area and collected a few copper heatsinks to attach to them.
You would be surprised at how much that alone improved the machine's running speed.
Now, I want to rebuild the machine completely. I think the processor fried, probably because I never used proc grease or anything like that. I think I used tooth paste if I am honest (and it did work if I remember correctly if only because the chip was THAT HOT under heavy loads). I don't have another 2.8 GHZ chip available, but I have plenty of 2.4G chips I can use. Same cache, HT enabled, just change that out. Then I have a cooler master PSU I want to use in it. Nothing new, an old IDE one, but I got it new in box on a scrapping run. Then I want to have the CD drive replaced and 3 HDD's set up. I think I still have a random 200 gig drive that I found in some PC (that was a holy shit moment for me because I had never owned one before in an age where 320 - 500 GB drives on Sata 3 were normal). Then, I want to pop the bios open again and see if I can bump some of the bus speeds for a 9600LE I have. If I can pop the bus up a little bit it should all run better.
Now trust me, I know it isn't the newest shit available but, well, its my little turd wrapped in gold foil. I'll probably put Windows Xp back on it (as well as Icaros lol) and install all the games I used to play on it. I'll get the shitty ergonomic keyboard I used to use out to put with it and go all out to make it a good machine again.
So, soon as I start that all up, maybe tomorrow or the day after, I'll post here again.
