First post, by RJDog
I am high on parts, and low on cases to put them in. I probably have twice as many mainboards and parts to build full systems than I do cases. Many months ago, I found and recapped an Socket 478 Intel board complete with 3GHz Northwood HT processor, and really wanted to do something with it -- I don't have any other Pentium 4s and thought it would be a great Windows 2000 Workstation build. So, scrounging for a case I didn't find anything that I was looking for, but came across a 2U SuperMicro server case. I measured the P4 heatsink height and found it would fit... so, challenge accepted!
One of the challenges was that I really, really wanted to include an M-Audio Delta 44 card that I still had from when I bought it new in 2001... this build would more-or-less be replicating my audio workstation I had then. The Delta card is full height, though, and this is a low profiles form factor case. So, I decided to bastardize the card and move the connector off-board connected by a short ribbon cable. This seems to have worked... the card is plugged in to the board using a right-angle PCI riser I had from another low profile case and then the connector runs the short distance to the make-shift low profile bracket for the DB15 connector. I also installed a FireWire card (which I also still had from when new in ~2002) this same way with a shorter PCI right angle riser.
I knew I would not get away with the same trick for a video card, so I found a low-profile ATI Radeon 9250 for $5 shipped. This is, by no means, a gaming card. It's no slouch, but I don't expect to play any AAA games on it, even from the target build era of 2003. But, this is meant to be a workstation anyway.
Last (minor) challenge was the drive situation. I wanted to use IDE; even though the motherboard has SATA ports on it, I don't trust onboard SATA from that era... and may be just a little too new for Windows 2000 anyway. But, the case was obviously not meant for routing IDE cables. I made it work, but I took off the Slave connector on the IDE cable so I could bend it the way I wanted. Turned out to be not a big deal.
No optical drive, but that's what Daemon Tools is for right?