lassista wrote on 2024-10-21, 10:03:

I am actually gonna go with yours advice for sandy/ivy system. Dell minitowers are extremly cheap, even cheaper than lga775 mb a […]
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I am actually gonna go with yours advice for sandy/ivy system. Dell minitowers are extremly cheap, even cheaper than lga775 mb alone.
Two questions:
1. case from dell vostro 460/470 or optiplex 4070 with matx board - while it can fit componenets I want, what about psu? does it have to dell branded one or I can put a normal ATX psu inside?
2. dell mb - won't ram slots collide with longer gpu?

I've never had a Dell desktop PC (other than at work) so I don't really know much about them. All of my retro rigs are custom built.

Someone else might be able to provide more info.

lassista wrote on 2024-10-21, 10:03:

I am actually gonna go with yours advice for sandy/ivy system. Dell minitowers are extremly cheap, even cheaper than lga775 mb a […]
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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-10-17, 08:34:

That shouldn't be a problem. Even my GTX 970 has a DVI-I port (only one) which can easily be converted to VGA using a passive ad […]
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lassista wrote on 2024-10-17, 08:23:

Second thing with GPU is that I want this PC to be connected to CRT screen, which means either VGA output or DVI that would work with simple DVI-VGA adapter I have in my drawer.

That shouldn't be a problem. Even my GTX 970 has a DVI-I port (only one) which can easily be converted to VGA using a passive adapter. I've used it like that a few times, and it worked fine.

lassista wrote on 2024-10-17, 08:23:

@Joseph, what about splinter cell on radeon cards?

The original Splinter Cell will work on Radeons, but with reduced visual quality of light and shadow effects. There's no way around that, the game was specifically coded for the Xbox and its GeForce 3 based GPU, so it can only show its full visual fidelity on the aforementioned Nvidia cards (or by using a wrapper). See this video by Phil for more details.

I am actually gonna go with yours advice for sandy/ivy system. Dell minitowers are extremly cheap, even cheaper than lga775 mb alone.
Two questions:
1. case from dell vostro 460/470 or optiplex 4070 with matx board - while it can fit componenets I want, what about psu? does it have to dell branded one or I can put a normal ATX psu inside?
2. dell mb - won't ram slots collide with longer gpu?

They use a proprietary PSU, you wont be able to swap it out with anything other than a new one of what it came with.

I dont know the Optiplex 4070 but I cant imagine it comes with a GPU connector. So while it is the right size for a GPU you want it is unlikely to be powerful enough for one.
I could be wrong of course, like I said I dont know that system, but they all follow the same lines of power.

A custome build system, with your own board, PSU, CPU etc etc would be much easier to get up and running because there are no pit traps to fall into like there is with these systems.

Not that I would warn you off one, I prefer them in many ways, but I went with HP not Dell so thats what I know.

As already mentioned, the prebuilt minitowers often use proprietary PSUs. That said if you aren't trying to build the fastest XP machine, GTX 750 Tis run around $35 on eBay and top out at 60W. That puts them below the 75W a PCIe slot provides so you don't need to deal with PCIe power connectors or adapters.

It's not the fastest card you can get working under XP, but it sips power and will run XP era games with ease as it was released after Windows 8 came out. Games that need more power would likely still run on a modern PC with Windows 10 or 11 and won't benefit from XP's hardware accelerated audio.