LGR - Building My Dream $3,588 Windows XP PC

Greetings and welcome to an L G R thing and this is going to be a Windows X P thing .

And today we're going to be building my ultimate Windows X P gaming PC from circa 2007 , 2008 .

Back then , I built an X P gaming PC as well , but not only does it no longer exist , but that machine was never particularly great .

I mean , I had a budget of like 900 bucks back then .

I just to afford the best hardware , but I still wanted to play the newest PC games , stuff like the elders girls , Four Oblivion and of course games like crisis .

As far as I'm concerned , crisis signaled a turning point in PC gaming when it hit in late 2007 , acting as a swan song for Windows X P in direct X nine .

And that's why I've chosen that time period , late oh seven , early oh eight as a basis for all the parts for today's build .

Not that it'll play crisis maxed out or anything , but I want to see what it would be like if money was no object for me .

Building a PC back then because , yeah , while the parts I've picked are cheap .

Nowadays , when they were still new , they would have totaled over 3.5 $1000 as you'll soon see .

And admittedly , there are plenty of other ways to play mid 2000 S PC games .

Retrofitting A PM four or Athlon based PC often work great .

Or you could even just take a modern PC , fiddle with some settings and that'll run .

Need for Speed Underground Two where crisis is better than a PC from 2007 .

But sometimes it just makes more sense or it's more oddly enjoyable to play it on specific hardware and not deal with virtual machines or patches and updates to get them working on modern computers .

I don't know , it's just something that I felt like doing .

Let's get to it .

So the first PC part from the pile of PC parts is the motherboard and I'm going with an E V G A 1 22 C K N F 68 B 11 of the 2007 revisions from E V G A S series of N F 68 boards built around the NVIDIA in 46 I S L I chip set .

I remember reading about these six AD I boards and being enamored not only with that beefy cooling setup , piping between the north and South bridges , but the capabilities and benchmarks of these six A I chip set , its in terms of features it has all the important stuff .

I'm looking for S L I graphics card support , a couple extra PC I and PC I express slots for expansion and plenty of integrated components including six USB 2.0 ports , dual gigabit ethernet ports , and even a classy firewire controller .

And of course , being that this is an L G A 7 75 compatible main board will need AC P U to match .

And for that , I've chosen the venerable Intel core two extreme Q X 68 50 running at three gigahertz when this thing hit the market in summer of 2007 , I was floored .

Not only was it a quad core E P U with higher clock and front side bus speeds than its predecessor , the E Q X 6800 .

But it was a little less costly as well .

Not that it was cheap though the 68 50 was still $1000 processor on launch more than my entire budget for a PC in 2007 .

And to cool off this beast , I'm going with one of the most absurd looking coolers .

I remember remember seeing around that time which is the thermal take black widow spin cue , just monstrous and overall size , really quiet with its custom 80 millimeter fan running at around 1000 R PM .

And I think it looks fantastic as well or at the very least eye catching to me , the spin queue looks more like a turbo charger than a low noise heat sink and fan combo .

Next up is the memory situation .

And I've chosen a pair of course air one gigabyte X MS 2 64 100 Ram sticks .

A higher end version of the D D R 800 ram that I had on my actual Windows X P machine in 2008 .

So , yeah , not the most ram in the world back then , but two gigs , it certainly gets the job done for what I'm looking to accomplish .

And that brings us to the graphics card or graphics cards .

Rather a pair of 320 megabyte G force 8800 G T S fatality edition cards from X FX .

While I do have a 768 megabyte 8800 ultra I thought about using which is a more powerful single card solution .

I've just always wanted to see what could be done with 2 320 meg G T S cards running an S L I .

Next is a sound card classic , the sound blaster oy platinum .

Even though the motherboard has integrated audio , I really wanted dedicated sound hardware with E A X for this build .

And while I'd prefer an O G two Z S or an X five card , I didn't have one on hand .

And yes , this also comes with an awesome five and a quarter inch front audio panel , but I won't be using it right now due to the color scheme .

If it was black instead of beige , I'd be all over it .

Next is the optical media drive .

And for that , I'm just going with this cheap L G DVD burner .

I found at Goodwill back in 2008 , I actually had a Samsung light scribe drive .

But until I get another one of those , this will do just fine and it uses a Ceta interface which is good because I'm avoiding all ribbon cables including on this 160 gigabyte Western Digital Raptor hard drive .

Actually , I have two of them because raid and because the idea of having dual 10,000 R PM hard drives seem so wild to me back then that the dream stuck with me ever since .

And of course , we'll need the operating system to stick on these , which will be Windows XP professional version 2002 .

Naturally though I'm going to be patching and update it with everything I can including service pack three here .

Did anyone else ever order service packs on disk from Microsoft back then ?

I sure did mostly because my internet sucked to power all this up .

We'll need a pretty substantial power supply .

And for that , I'm going with this 1000 watt semi modular rose will power supply .

The only component I bought brand new specifically for this build .

Turns out finding new old stock 1000 watt P S us isn't easy .

And yeah , I just feel more comfortable with something new .

Anyway , I've never used a Rose Will P S U before , but I really wanted 1000 watt unit and this one had decent reviews and wasn't super costly .

So I'm gonna give it a shot .

And finally , there's the case , which is another rose will coincidentally enough , the striker M case was actually intended for another project that a friend and I were working on a couple of years ago that never came together .

And since it was lying around in storage and I figured why not put it to good use ?

Even though it was manufactured in 2016 , it still has a look to it .

That really feels like 2008 to me .

And it's big enough inside to fit all the components we have while still hopefully having enough airflow and let's be real .

You can't do a late two thousands gaming PC without a clear side window and led lighting .

That is just a given out of curiosity .

I decided to add up all these suggested retail prices for these components when they were new .

And wow .

Yeah , there is no way I'd have been able to afford this stuff .

New .

Heck could be a shocking sticker price even now .

That's like $4200 with inflation .

So I'm pretty stoked to have gotten all this for roughly 200 bucks over the past couple of years .

Alright .

It's time to get this build going starting with the processor simple enough stuff here , just unlatching the metal plating and dropping the Q X 68 50 into the proper position .

Gonna use a little Arctic M X four thermal pace to get it ready for that massive C P U cooler .

And while the cooler comes with a bunch of adapters for various setups with an L G A 7 75 board , it's pretty darn straightforward screw in these two sets of clamps , then drop it into place over the C P U and click each of the four clamps into place and that's it .

We'll get the fan plugged into the motherboard and then ram installed in their appropriate slots for dual channel support and Oh yeah , looking good .

No , seriously , it's looking good .

Just check out that profile .

I don't know , maybe you think it looks excessive or I should have used water cooling or whatever .

But to me there's something about vast rows of shiny metal fins and piping that never ceases to amuse .

Next up is the case which needs a little bit of preparation first and got a little bag of goodies tape to the bottom here .

And oh , hey , it comes with a PC speaker .

The motherboard has one already , but these are always quite handy .

So I'll be holding on to that otherwise .

Yeah , I just gotta screw in the appropriate offset .

So we have somewhere to mount the motherboard and we'll get the I O panel plate clicked into places while we're at it .

All right time to get this thing screwed in .

And so far , I'm quite happy with the layout of this case .

Plenty of room for activities making it no problem at all .

To get the case fans plugged into the appropriate headers .

Gonna go ahead and install one of the GP two , but only one of them since I'll leave the S L I set up for later .

Right now .

I just want to get the basic stuff installed so we can make sure it boots properly .

With the final thing being the power supply down here , got the main line going to the motherboard , another going to the graphics card and then we've got this that powers the C P U and uh well , crap .

I did not even think to look where this goes .

Turns out it connects right beside the C P U underneath that massive cooling assembly .

This was not fun .

I had to either remove the spin cue entirely or take off the top of the case .

So I decided on the ladder , thankfully , I was able to get the top lifted off enough to get the power cable installed without taking apart the whole case .

But even then it was a tight fit due to that frigging heat sink .

Oh , well , nice opportunity to see the other side of the case which will definitely be utilizing for some cable ma management .

I like that little 2.5 inch tray tucked away in there too .

Maybe I'll add an S S D some time .

Alrighty , let's get this thing powered on and fingers crossed .

Everything's working so far and we can continue to build .

I'm gonna be using a 16 by nine monitor throughout the rest of this video .

By the way though , I was using a 16 10 panel back in 2008 .

So that'd probably be more appropriate .

Anyway , let's power it on for the first time .

And well , that's not good .

Thankfully , it has this little green L CD panel on the motherboard which stops on C one that's a memory detection issue according to E V G A website .

So let's start removing rams sticks and see what happens .

And luckily it seems that fixed it , the first gigabyte of ram was fine , but the second wouldn't post at all .

So , yeah , I guess we'll just move forward with half the ram till I can get a replacement next up .

Let's get those 10,000 R PM hard disks installed .

And here's another reason I wanted to use this case , I had tool drive mounting , just remove this tray , clip the hard drive into place and slide it back in there .

I don't know how quiet this will be .

It kind of seems like it may rattle around a little bit being that these are such high speed spinning platters .

But we'll see for now , I'm just gonna start winding power and data cables throughout the case , starting with this four pin molex connector that goes into the motherboard for powering the S L I set up and we'll go ahead and plop the second GP U in here along with its own PC I express power cable .

Then the sound card , which due to space is going to go right between in the two graphics cards .

Thankfully , it's short enough that it's not blocking the fans .

And finally , the S L I bridge connector goes right here finalizing our dual GP U configuration .

Now to get the DVD R W going and to do that , we actually have to remove the entire front of the case .

It just kind of rips off of there with a bit of force which felt chaotic to me .

But that's what the manual said to do .

Anyway , this is a screw , this design as well .

So it just clips in there snugly ready for some cable .

And yeah , there's a whole mess of stuff around the side .

Now , even being a semi modular P S U , each of the modules are ridiculously long and packed with more connections than I actually need .

So we're just gonna pack it all in there and hide it behind this panel .

So let's get the other panel in place and remove that plastic whoops .

I had some on the other side too .

There we go .

Uh Now that is looking sleek on to the software side of things .

Now , starting with the raid configuration for what I want to do .

I'm looking at two main options , striped known as Raid Zero and mirrored , known as Raid One .

And while Rade one is safer being that it mirrors the discs .

I'm gonna roll the dice and go with striped Rade zero .

Since I'm not gonna put any important data on these drives , I'm fine with the risk .

Plus I get the full 300 gigs of storage and hopefully a bit more speed this way .

Finally , it's time to get Windows X P installed on our new healthy raid array which went absolutely swimmingly until it didn't .

Yeah , blue screen of death during Windows setup is never fun .

Now , I figured I just needed to install the NVIDIA Raid drivers .

But in order to do that , they needed to be in a floppy disk , but I don't have a floppy drive installed here and I really don't want to bother with one .

So I just went with a tried and true method in light .

I used to use this all the time to make custom windows configurations .

Basically , this just takes the X P set up files and customizes them with whatever you need .

So I added the raid drivers through this , made myself a custom , I so burned it onto a disk and presto no more BS O D only smooth sailing from here on out .

Oh , look an exciting new .

Look how exciting .

I love the Windows X P set up for some reason with its cheerful bright blue interface and chillax soundtrack .

At this point , it's just a bunch of driver installation .

So I'm not gonna show that whole routine being that it's a routine suffice to say that it went well though no problems encountered .

Mm detected both cards straight away .

Eventually providing this pop up , letting me know and L I setup was detected .

The NVIDIA control panel lets you enable that with a simple software switch and bam dual GP us at the ready .

So let's get to some gaming .

Dang it starting with a mid two thousands classic the elder scrolls Oblivion .

Um Man , this is some gratifying stuff back when I first got oblivion .

My PC was hot garbage and I had a hand me down H P Pavilion from 2003 with like a roll of toilet paper for a video card .

It didn't run oblivion hardly at all .

But I played the crap out of it anyway .

And now seeing what it would have been like running on a monster machine from around that time period .

Yeah .

Look at me now past me , I've got two video cards and a stupidly fast C P U and dual Western digital Raptors .

Suck it .

Needless to say oblivion runs pretty great at the moment .

I'm running it on the high preset with no anti aliasing or V sync and a resolution of 12 80 by 7 20 .

So that's a resolution that was pretty typical for the time period .

And even though there's screen tearing , having V sync turned off , let's just see how high we can go in terms of unlocked frame rate .

I'll be using these same settings or as close as I can get to them for the rest of the games .

I'll be testing too and I'm using the program FRS to show the F P S in the top left corner there .

So yeah , oblivious drops below 60 F P s when a lot of crap is going on in the open world .

But there are plenty of areas where it runs well above that .

And loading is an absolute breeze with this and everything else .

I tested for that matter with much of that .

Thanks to those speedy Raptor hard drives .

Just awesome .

Next up , we've got to test the big one crisis which can bring a far more capable system to its knees with no problems .

So I'm quite curious and while running the GP U benchmark gives you an idea of how it runs , which for the most part falls between 30 and 50 F P S .

This is on medium 7 , 20 P settings across the board by the way .

But even on high , it achieved similar results .

Although there's some major slowdown on loading new areas and effects , which is disappointing .

But maybe that's because I'm only running one gig of ram though , from what I've read , it doesn't seem S L I really helps crisis out too much .

And in fact , it seems to cause some weird issues .

Check out the foliage , for instance , it's all flickering and glitched out .

This is running the latest patch though and it seemed I got better results after downgrading the NVIDIA drivers and running an older version of the game , which is what you're seeing here running on the high graphics setting .

But yeah , no matter what , it's still had issues rendering stuff , everything from foliage to character models to vehicle tires that would appear and disappear .

Seemingly at random .

I'm betting that 8800 Ultra I've got would be a better choice here .

Oh , well , moving on to something I know will work just fine .

And that is Grand Theft Auto Vice City wasn't able to get this working and proper wide screen , kept crashing the game .

So it's playing here at 12 80 by 9 60 .

And yeah , it runs stupidly well , with the frame limiter turned off only dipping below 200 F P S here and there .

No surprise though .

This is a game from 2002 and doesn't demand much at all from PC hardware of the mid two thousands , but it's an absolute must have for a Windows X P PC .

So I couldn't resist .

All right , let's give a simulation game a shot with Sim City four Deluxe from 2003 .

Although it kind of looks like it's using Isometric two D imagery it's actually using a 3D game engine from a fixed perspective with a lot of complex systems underneath that .

And playing larger cities can be quite taxing on AC P U as a result .

It runs about as well as one can hope with wildly varying frame rates depending on what's being loaded at the time .

Maxing out at 60 due to the game settings .

Still , this runs 1000 times better than my PC of the time did even in 2008 .

So yeah , good stuff .

All right .

Next up , we've got monolithic fear from 2005 a game that not only impressed in terms of gameplay but was next level with its shading and physics running the graphical benchmark .

You can see why with its crazy particle effects and lighting , I think this still looks pretty awesome .

Even today , it dipped down to 39 F P S at one point .

But for the most part , it's in the mid 50 F P S range or higher at maximum settings and wow , I forgot how much I enjoyed playing this .

It's been ages since I last dipped my toes into this one .

Definitely got to review this at some point .

I love this game and now I just want to play all afternoon , but alas must move on to another great game need for Speed Underground two while it wasn't my favorite at the time .

I've got to say this racer from 2004 has grown on me quite a lot over the years .

It was the first NFS game to provide an open world and was by far the most graphically impress to date with an unprecedented amount of car customization for the series on top of that .

And yeah , it runs pretty fantastically on max settings hanging around the 70 F P S mark for the most part and occasionally dropping to the forties when it hits a tricky track section .

Still though super playable and far beyond anything I experienced when I was playing on my PC back then .

What an awesome game .

Speaking of awesome , let's get into some Unreal Tournament U T 2004 to be exact with its legendary Unreal engine 2.5 .

And I always loved maxing out the graphics because whenever you do and no big shock whatsoever , the game runs flawlessly .

This was quite well optimized to begin with .

But on a PC like this , there's nothing stopping it from running it well over 100 F P s at all times .

Once again , I forgot how much I enjoyed this game .

It's been far too long since I've played it , but it all came back to me in an instant .

That's really why I wanted to make this machine to revisit games .

I hadn't in years either because they're tricky to run on modern hardware or because it just doesn't quite feel the same playing on a modern PC compatibility modes and patches are nice and all .

But there's something genuinely special about playing games on hardware closer to when they launched .

I don't know , it's an arbitrary thing .

But to me , there's a notable difference in how it feels to play .

Even 3d pinball , Space Cadet feels more appropriate in an actual Windows X P machine .

If anything , it's consistently amusing to play such a simple little game on a build that would have cost like four grand when it was new .

It's relatively high specifications also mean that this makes for a pretty good emulation rig too with things like DOS Box being no problem at all .

And even with more advanced do games like Duke Newcomb 3d , sure you can do this just as easily on a modern PC , but it's actually kind of nice to have such great emulation options on a slightly older computer if you ask me .

And that is it for my Dream Windows X P PC from circa 2007 , 2008 , man .

I don't know about you , but I am pleased as Balls over this thing .

It looks great .

It plays great and it has a nice set of upgrade options if I choose to do so in the future .

And I absolutely do .

Let me tell you this is not the last time you'll be seeing this thing on L G R .

In fact , I've already made a few changes since I originally filmed this .

For one thing I added two of these 120 millimeter course air cooling fans to the top of the case , as well as one more along the bottom because this thing runs hot .

It's like a space heater inside .

So the increased air flow helped a lot .

I also grabbed another two gigabyte ram kit , same one I had before , except this time , all the sticks work .

So now I have three gigs of Ram installed which on this 32 bit version of windows leaves me with 2.5 gigabytes .

A welcome and notable improvement .

And then there's the front panel USB ports , which I didn't even think about while building it .

But their USB 3.0 and the motherboard only had a header for two point oh , so I dropped in a cheap USB three controller card inside and now I have working USB ports on the front of the case that are faster than what's on the motherboard itself .

About .

The only other thing I want to do is upgrade the sound card because the A G that's in here doesn't have an H D audio and really , I just want something newer anyway .

But yeah , that'll be for another time .

As for today .

I hope you enjoyed seeing this come together even half as much as I enjoyed building it .

This was more fun than I even thought it'd be if you'd like to see other build videos .

Definitely check these out or stick around I make new videos and all sorts of retro tech and games every week here on L G R .