Earlier this year I started a thread about my cheap Core i3 computer that now handles most of my retro gaming. This is a what it looks like, what the specs are, etc. This isn't a particularly interesting computer at face value, but I hope it might encourage some conversation about what aspects of our hobby we enjoy most (the games? what it looks and feels like? the hardware itself?). In my opinion there's no "right" or "wrong" way to enjoy retro computing, and this is one option maybe some of you might find interesting. I look forward to your comments!

Before I start, I would say that I do have some experience with actual old-ish hardware. I grew up using a 68040 Macintosh, then a Pentium II Packard Bell. Those machines are sadly gone, but I did preserve and restore the very first computer I built myself from scratch - a 440BX Pentium III. I have a moderate collection of vintage hardware, with four operational retro computers running Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. Each system has its own strengths, weaknesses, and peculiarities. But despite this... I wanted to have one system where I can sink most of my gaming time, that:

• runs everything from DOS to late Windows XP era games very very well
• is stable, robust, cheap to repair, and low-guilt when it comes to putting hours and hours of runtime on it
• looks, sounds, and feels like my imperfect memories of the past - not necessarily in a completely authentic way, but in a way that pleases me!

So here's the specs, starting with what it looks, sounds, and feels like:

• 19" LG Flatron CRT (bought new in 2004, I have moved it to this rig and my PIII is instead paired with a another CRT)
• Sennheiser HD555 open back headphones (had these lying around, they sound great)
• Razer Orochi V2 2.4 GHz wireless mouse (way more responsive than retro, but it has a vaguely familiar shape... pulls double duty as a Bluetooth mouse paired with a Surface Pro)
• NextTime X75 mechanical keyboard from AliExpress (the least retro thing about this build... I got sick of how much space my Model M took up and I needed a volume dial)
• two Xbox 360 wireless controllers, with the official Microsoft wireless receiver (official WinXP driver support)

And the inside:
CPU: Intel Core i3 540 overclocked from 3.07 GHz to 3.83 GHz (the oc is completely unnecessary for retro games but I was so amused that I kept it)
MB: Asus Maximums III Gene (Intel P55 chipset) with 2x 2GB DDR3 memory
VGA: PowerColor Radeon 5770 1GB PCIe (this card has a VGA port, which is handy because my quirky case doesn't have space for a DVI-VGA adapter brick)
Sound: Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 PCI
Drive 1: Intel SSD DC S3500 160GB with Windows XP SP3 32-bit (Intel's toolbox software supports manual TRIM in WinXP)
Drive 2: Intel SSD320 160GB with KDE Neon Linux and Windows 7 x64 (this is set as the boot drive in the BIOS, and GRUB can then load Windows XP from Drive 1)
Case: Silverstone FT03 (the reviews said this case isn't very good, but when it came out I wanted one anyway... it's just so quirky)

So where does this get me? Well, it runs basically any XP era game at 1280x1024 far above 85fps (the CRT hits 85Hz at this resolution) with 4x MSAA and 16xAF. Most of the Win98 era games I want to play work too with some fiddling... often with a patch and/or a Glide wrapper. Admittedly it is a bit of a chore getting some Win9x games to work but once I get it working there's something very nice about having multiple eras worth of games all on the same system without a need to reboot. I also have DOSBox and Basilisk installed. Obviously emulation isn't truly authentic... but I personally loathe the chore of DOS troubleshooting more than I loathe Win9x/XP troubleshooting. DOSBox and Basilisk look great fullscreen on the CRT. Actually everything looks great on the CRT.

I could boil this down to a reliable cheap fast computer that plays CRT era games really really well on a real CRT.

Perhaps my favorite thing of all about this system is that it tucks into a corner of my main office. When I'm not retro-ing, I swing my 24" arm mounted flatpanel over to block the CRT and get back to work.