VOGONS


First post, by Robhalfordfan

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Hello all

been working on this since mid/late October 2019 to to put together and tweak to be as perfect as i can see it and seems a good build for cover the 2000's more or less

specs below -

Motherboard - Evga nForce 780i SLI - 132-CK-NF78-A1
PSU - EVGA 650 GQ 80+ Gold 650W
Processor - Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 @ 3.00 Ghz (Noctua NH-U9S Heatsink with NM-i3 Mounting Kit)
Ram - 4 GB DDR2 (4x CM2X1024-6400C5DHX) (upgraded to 8GB DDR2 (4x Corsair twin 2x 4096-6400C5DHX))
Graphic card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 KFA2 Accelero Xtreme Plus 1536MB
Sound Card - Sound Blaster X-FI Fatal1ty FPS

Drives
- 3.5 Floppy (720kb - 1.44mb)
- Asus DRW-24B3LT - DVD/RW 24X
- 3x Western Digital WD5003ABYX - 7.2K SATA - 500GB (Added another HDD (4x Western Digital WD5003ABYX - 7.2K SATA - 500GB))

I/O Ports
- 8x USB ports (6 on Mobo and 2 on Case Using USB 3.0 to USB 2.0 Adpater)
- 1x Firewire Port
- 2x PS/2 Port
- 1x DB-9 M Serial
- Dual Ethernet Ports
-On-Board Audio (audio cable to line in on sound card to use headphone jack on case)

Extras
- Sound Blaster X-FI Fatal1ty FPS - 5.25 I/O Bay
- 3x 120mm Case Fan
- 1x 140mm Case Fan
- PS/2 Mouse + Keyboard
- Corsair Carbide Series 200R Case

Operating Systems
- Windows XP Professional SP3 ------->------->------> All Using Third
- Windows Vista Ultimate SP2 x64---->------>-------> Party Boot Manager:
- Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 X64------->---->------> -->Acronis OS Selector 11

Last edited by Robhalfordfan on 2022-07-08, 16:29. Edited 8 times in total.

Reply 1 of 6, by chinny22

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Very Nice but maybe thats becoause it's very close to my daily PC!

M/B: Asus P5N-D (750 SLI)
CPU: Xeon x3320 2.50Ghz with Noctua NH-U14S heatsink
RAM: 2x Crucial Ballistix Tracer 800MHz 4-4-4 (I like flashy lights)
GPU: 2x ASUS GeForce GTX590
Sound: SB X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion (Also with the drive bay)
FDD: Gotex
Case: Corsair Obsidian 650d

HDD's and DVD whatever I salvage from work much like how I got the CPU.
It's built to be a WinXP powerhouse which it is. Win7 is just used for web surfing basic office task which it's fine at.
775 is a funny era. Even though it came out end of XP era it outlasted Vista and made it into Win7 PC's

Someone no doubt will say what's the point of having Vista installed, and yeh it is pointless but it isnt a bad OS to have a poke around with these days.

Reply 2 of 6, by Robhalfordfan

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thank you - took a while and thinking one of two things to add but deffo at a much more later time 😀

it is not as powerful as my daily modern win 10 machine for stuff generally early 2010s to present - ish

win xp is deffo a powerhouse for this build and the high end
vista is there because why not 🤷 (for few vista dx 10 games and vista only stuff - which i know there is not that many ) and for high/mid end
win 7 is there for stuff that dosen't run in xp at all and doesn't run well in vista which is more mid/low end

Reply 3 of 6, by lordmogul

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That's pretty close to one of the builds I got, GTX 660 Ti instead of a 580, but they should be pretty similar in performance, and a Xeon X5460, because the high-end C2Q (Q9550, Q9650),are typically more expensive then thy should be with often the price of the Xeon. Dual booting XP and 7.

Overall a nice build, a powerhouse for the late XP/DX9 era with some headroom into later times, should be able to run pretty much everything up to around 2012-2015 fine. Even EAX is there.

P3 933EB @1035 (7x148) | CUSL2-C | GF3Ti200 | 256M PC133cl3 @148cl3 | 98SE & XP Pro SP3
X5460 @4.1 (9x456) | P35-DS3R | GTX660Ti | 8G DDR2-800cl5 @912cl6 | XP Pro SP3 & 7 SP1
3570K @4.4 GHz | Z77-D3H | GTX1060 | 16G DDR3-1600cl9 @2133cl12 | 7 SP1

Reply 4 of 6, by Robhalfordfan

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lordmogul wrote on 2020-02-19, 15:37:

That's pretty close to one of the builds I got, GTX 660 Ti instead of a 580, but they should be pretty similar in performance, and a Xeon X5460, because the high-end C2Q (Q9550, Q9650),are typically more expensive then thy should be with often the price of the Xeon. Dual booting XP and 7.

Overall a nice build, a powerhouse for the late XP/DX9 era with some headroom into later times, should be able to run pretty much everything up to around 2012-2015 fine. Even EAX is there.

thank you, i manage find the cpu cheaply off ebay

it was lgr video on his dream xp build that inspired me to build this for all xp era games i own since i was teen and able to play them again and give headroom for later games that could easily run on my modern machine but something nice about playing them on hardware closer to when they were released and play out the box instead of third party patches and modding of game files to get the run on modern hardware and win 10

i remember hearing about eax but being a teen (i couldn't afford them at the time) and found a good deal online couple of years ago

Reply 5 of 6, by Joseph_Joestar

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Robhalfordfan wrote on 2020-02-20, 12:18:

i remember hearing about eax but being a teen (i couldn't afford them at the time) and found a good deal online couple of years ago

EAX is pretty great, especially if you never experienced it properly back in the day. I had a SB128 in the early 2000s, and comparing its crappy software EAX to the Audigy 2 ZS which I have now is night and day.

Shame Microsoft decided to get rid of it after WindowsXP.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 6 of 6, by Robhalfordfan

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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-02-20, 12:34:
Robhalfordfan wrote on 2020-02-20, 12:18:

i remember hearing about eax but being a teen (i couldn't afford them at the time) and found a good deal online couple of years ago

EAX is pretty great, especially if you never experienced it properly back in the day. I had a SB128 in the early 2000s, and comparing its crappy software EAX to the Audigy 2 ZS which I have now is night and day.

Shame Microsoft decided to get rid of it after WindowsXP.

i never had any experience with it at the time but compare to non-eax cards with games like f.e.a.r, doom 3, the witcher 1, fallout 3, vice city and san andreas, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2 and call of Juarez, assassin creed 1 dc - i can hear the different

even with an older sb live 5.1 (My Socket 478 Build (Win 98se) - DEAD) with older games like mafia 1, gta 3, blair witch volume 1-3, nocture, soldier of fortune 1, star wars ep 1, driver 1 - again i can hear a different

some uses it better than others but still there