Well, it's come time. My laptop is becoming more and more useless as the thermal paste wears away and thus I needed a powerful computer. This project has been years in the making, and many, many hours of research and a lucky find at my local Salvation Army Meet "Gramps" ; a 1999 spec AOL machine inspired by MCM I bought for $9 at my local Salvation army. The case and components are in mint condition considering its 16 years old. It's become my goal to rip out the innards of this beige box and turn it into a beast gaming and editing rig. Gramps comes with: Intel Pentium III, running at 866MHz 512MB PC2 Ram, (I stuck a spare stick in there for speed) 20GB HDD filled with a stranger's family photos (my god people wipe your hard drive before you give it away) ATI RAGE XL Ethernet Card Sound Card Floppy Drive DVD Drive Windows XP /\ that sticker is staying Gramps will be getting: Gigabyte H97 HD3 Check Intel i5 4690 (non - K) Check EVGA GTX 750Ti Check EVGA 500B 500 W Check WiFi Card (haven't decided model yet) 8GB RAM HyperX 1600mhz Check Some new fans (intake and exhaust fans) So I'm already at day 3 of the build as I type this, but I'll post the pictures I took yesterday Day 1: Buy, clean exterior and start up Check Day 2: Remove everything except floppy drive and DVD drive, airblast clean, prepare case for new fans Check Day 3: Buy Mobo, PSU and fans and CPU, fit them Check Day 4: GPU, RAM and other peripherals Check Day 5: Fit my old HDD, <Check BOOT FOR FIRST TIME install Linux and Windows, then BeamNG and some other games Day 6: Some stuff I forgot I'll be posting my progress!
Re: "Gramps" computer build - Pentium III to Intel i7 Ah, the MCM Gramps build, now ruined by the plan to bodykit it. I don't like bodykits at the best of times and now they want to put a bodykit on a car originally intended to be a sleeper. Imagine turning up to a LAN party with that thing, sleeper PC
Please keep the stickers on there and keep the case XD I love love to see the reactions of you bringing that case to a gaming expo and people think that thing is not upgraded, then its actually faster than most of the computers there XD
Eventually I would love to do this with an old Gateway that I have from 2000. It has a windows ME sticker and Intel Celeron Sticker on it.
Wicked! Back in the day I used to run a P3 733, with a 3dfx card. Those were the days! If I were you I'd keep this old PC stock and use it as a Win95/Win98 setup. Back to 16 colours or DOS games without all the modern hassles of DosBox and beyond..
I had an 866MHz setup with 3dfx voodoo2 as a kid, rocking and rolling with that monster. It had some sort of coaxial connector for ethernet....
Glad you guys like it! Yep, those stickers are totally staying, needs them for the stealth look. But I don't think it's going to any LAN parties, this things' a BEAST. The metal case alone is probably like 30 pounds, plus the floppy and dvd drive. That said, I dropped it on the ground and the ground is dented. Case is immaculate. Anyway, sorry for the lack of progress, I've been really busy, and now it's done! Here come the pics Pentium III is out! Case cleaned and prepped for new Mobo This computer was last serviced in 2001 $700 dollars later... She's done! ohhhh ahhhhh Already fired it up, of coarse there's no OS on my old used HDD but it started up into the BIOS real quick, both RAM modules and CPU are detected, GPU seems to work, except the exhaust fan on the case doesn't work. Anyone know how to fix this? I already switched it with the CPU fan header and it doesn't work where the CPU does work, so something's up with the fan. It does turn one revolution then stops, so it's not totally dead.
not doing something like connecting a 4 wire fan to a 2 or 3 wire socket? Dead fan is all I can think of otherwise, I have heard similar things from brushless motors with a busted hall sensor and those fans do use a hall sensor with a brushless motor.
Slight update - all fans now work. I heard the fan's motor revving so I was about to remove it to take it apart and glue something but I pushed on the centre of the fan hub and it clicked and the fan span up real quick. With my finger in it. 'Tis just a flesh wound. Anyway with all my fans going it's still really quite, I specifically bought them for granny spec stealth. Unfortunately the stock Intel fan sucks and makes a lot of noise, and hardly moves any air. Might want to upgrade that... Installed Linux Mint, but it doesn't work with my graphics card (drivers only work with Windows, plus the old DVD drive doesn't plug into a motherboard 15 years younger than it, so no factory disked drivers) so it's probably going to be formatted in favour of storage Currently installing Windows 7 Ultimate, will update when done
The 750Ti is fully supported by nvidia under Linux... One of the benefits of nvidia over AMD, they actually write decent Linux drivers. The CD won't include them, get em straight from nvidia.
Windows is finally working right! All drivers are installed, and I would called it done (but I may buy a pci-e WiFi adapter) Runs BeamNG at 35 FPS maxed out (with ridiculous PostFx) at 1080p on Dry Rock, with some subtle overclocking and turning down PostFX I max out my monitor at 60 on any map. Runs totally cool after running BeamNG for an hour, at 35 C. It's ridiculously quiet now the side panel is back on, quieter than my laptop. REALLY AWESOME
Keep the stickers xD I still keep the one that came with my HD 4870, back in the days when AMD was Ati
Thats like dropping in a Modern day NASCAR engine into a Ford Model T....now thats what I call ULTRA Stealth PC build
Nice I love the idea. Watch the cooling though. That case might not have the best airflow out there...
Wow compared to my pc witch isn't great at highest setting at all amazing job on building a ultra fast pc
