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My new Athlon XP 1800+ Windows 2000 rig!

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First post, by harddrivespin

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Pretext: As it turns out, my Cyrix has a bust IDE channel meaning I cannot use a DVD drive with it, so I gutted it and built a new PC in its case.

Specs:

- AMD Athlon XP 1800+ OC'd to 1.7ghz
- MSI KT4 Ultra, VIA KT400 chipset
- 512mb DDR-266 RAM (Quite good for a PC from 2002, though by that time PCs were moving on to 768mb and even 1gb RAM)
- ATI Radeon 7200 (Mid end card from 2000, 64mb)
- 10gb WD10 HDD
- Packard Bell OEM DVD drive from 2006
- Panasonic JU 1.44mb FDD
- Some 350w PSU from 2002
- Windows 2000 Professional SP2

All of the parts in this PC are from between 1998 and 2002, save the DVD drive as it is the only IDE DVD drive I have that I know works. This machine is perfect for all my early 2000s and late 90s games- All are at 30fps stable or above. These include Lego Racers, Civilization II, Zoo Tycoon, and Rome Total War. I may also try Quake or Unreal Tournament '99 on this machine due to the fact the machine looks up for the task. Critique?

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Reply 3 of 6, by SW-SSG

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harddrivespin wrote:

The one in there ATM is 350w- I have a spare 250w Seasonic ATX PSU- should I put that in instead or will there be power issues?

I'd do so. Knowing Linkworld, that 350w unit probably won't do more than ~200w reliably, anyway.

Reply 4 of 6, by Thandor

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Make sure the 5V is relatively decent. However, a Thoroughbred Athlon XP+ is not that power hungry so you don't need a big PSU. If your motherboard allows it you might even be able to drop the vCore quite a bit; even at overclocked frequencies!

Ditch the optical and getting a color matching one! And get a casefan for better airflow. I'm not sure about your CPU heatsink/fan but with proper airflow and a decent CPU cooler (I loved the Arctic Super Silent Pro and alikes for being dirt cheap and being exceptionally good) you can make these systems quiet.

Install the latest service pack for Win2K. I'm not sure about SP2 but going from the vanilla version to SP4 will increase gaming performance.

thandor.net - hardware
And the rest of us would be carousing the aisles, stuffing baloney.

Reply 5 of 6, by chinny22

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Got my first DVD drive in 99 or 2000? So while the drive may be newer the tech was around. If you wanted a way to justify it in there 😉
While I was a fan of Win2k back then for the "serious" work (internet, MS Office, CD burning) I had it in my mind that the performance hit on a P2 400 was too much and duel booted into WIn98SE for gaming.

Few years ago I tried out my games on a Duel P3 600 running Win2k and never looked back, accept for a few games its soooo much more stable and now my WIn9x gamins OS of choice
(I do run SP4 though)

You need a SB Live, those things scream early 2000's IMHO

Reply 6 of 6, by harddrivespin

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@Thandor

While I could drop vCore, I doubt I will. The DVD drive is the only one I have that is IDE and I know 100% works- All others I have are SATA or faulty. I'm using SP2 for time period accuracy (Build contains parts from between 1998 and 2002)... Right now I have a very noisy 10gb WD10 HDD and I might have a dual drive setup if need be.

EDIT: Powerlink PSU

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