Amigaz wrote:

How come you didn't put in a beefier graphics card?

I have to do something about the CPU fan on my system....it almost sounds like my system is about to do a take off when I stress the CPU 😜

I want to try out old cards without a CPU bottleneck. The fastest AGP card I have right now is a GeForce 7300 GT which is probably like a Radeon 9800 Pro overall. But I'd rather play with older stuff.

The fans in this box are rather annoying too. The PSU and CPU fans are temperature controlled.

swaaye wrote:

Amigaz wrote:

How come you didn't put in a beefier graphics card?

I have to do something about the CPU fan on my system....it almost sounds like my system is about to do a take off when I stress the CPU 😜

I want to try out old cards without a CPU bottleneck. The fastest AGP card I have right now is a GeForce 7300 GT which is probably like a Radeon 9800 Pro overall. But I'd rather play with older stuff.

The fans in this box are rather annoying too. The PSU and CPU fans are temperature controlled.

Aright, so it's for pure testing purposes 😀

The case ventilation is one of the things that annoys me with the case design Dell used in these PC's...the CPU and PSU fan has to work hard to push out the hot air so they often work overtime 😜

I plan to replace the CPU fan with a nice Noctua fan

Yeah my box sounds like a little turbine after a bit too. And it doesn't quiet down much even when idle. I don't really feel like trying to make it better though because it'll cost money 🤣

It's both the PSU and that rear exhaust fan that are the problems. And like you say there's no intake fan so they are fighting for air. But even with the case side off it seems to be just as loud.

Updates:

Threw in a Nec ND-3550 DVD-RW DL drive

Replaced the noisy CPU fan with a Noctua 80mm high quality and silent fan

Took some desktop screenshots...

Windows 98SE:

Windows XP Pro:

@amigaz

Just curious since it looks like you play HL2 Ep2 on that machine. How does it run and what are the settings like? I ran HL2 on my Dell P4 2Ghz with Nvidia 4600Ti. Was playable at 800x600 and a bit laggy at 1024x768. Oddly enough FEAR ran better while NFS MW and Vampires: The Masquerade was a lost cause.

What's the most stressful game that you have tested on it? With that setup I found that I could play everything up to 2003 perfectly. Beyond that, the settings were too low to be enjoyable.

I actually never ran a P4 as a gaming rig back in the day- I only ever used them for work- which did until this year, when I finally retired my 3ghz Presshot in favour of a Q8200 setup.

For games it was straight PIII to Socket 939 Athlon 64 - one big, big jump. 😁

I could never justify building or bringing home a RAMBUS machine. The memory was expensive and hard to find then and it still is. The only way I could possibly justify it is if the motherboard is fully populated and the price is CHEEEEEEEEP!

@sgt76

HL2 runs quite smooth but with a hickup or two sometimes

I've set everything to max and use 1152x864 res.

Think HL2 is the most stressful game I've ran on it...only plan to run 2003/2004 and older titles on it
Might give Quake 4 a go on it and see how it goes

sliderider wrote:

I could never justify building or bringing home a RAMBUS machine. The memory was expensive and hard to find then and it still is. The only way I could possibly justify it is if the motherboard is fully populated and the price is CHEEEEEEEEP!

Yeah, only 2x256mb kits have reasonable prices but 2x512mb kits still go for 100 bucks or more 😜

Amigaz wrote:

sliderider wrote:

I could never justify building or bringing home a RAMBUS machine. The memory was expensive and hard to find then and it still is. The only way I could possibly justify it is if the motherboard is fully populated and the price is CHEEEEEEEEP!

Yeah, only 2x256mb kits have reasonable prices but 2x512mb kits still go for 100 bucks or more 😜

😵

I'm kinda glad I haven't run into an orphaned rambus system yet...wouldn't know what to do! I'll take SDRAM, DDR and EDO boards any day 😁

Amigaz wrote:

@sgt76 […]
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@sgt76

HL2 runs quite smooth but with a hickup or two sometimes

I've set everything to max and use 1152x864 res.

Think HL2 is the most stressful game I've ran on it...only plan to run 2003/2004 and older titles on it
Might give Quake 4 a go on it and see how it goes

Nice settings- looks like that 3.06 HT and 9800XT pack a wallop. '03-'04 were in MHO some of the best years for PC gaming. You have some of my favs installed - HL2, Far Cry, Max Payne and COD 2 were some of my best gaming moments ever!

Amigaz,

I found that if you short out the thermistor on the big Dell 38mm x 92mm case fan it will run full speed constantly. On 12v, this is insane, but if you rig up a 5v power plug the beast is almost silent while moving a lot of air.