Not really into period builds so not too sure on dates but seems to be about right for early P4
Still beige, still IDE, 2 Optical drives to wear and tear on the other.
I'd argue the keyboard IS period correct as hardware was still often carried over to the next computer .

But for me this screams overkill Win98 build, even if its dual boot. All your hardware has official 9x drivers. And where XP games will start to struggle, 9x games will fly!

I agree with Chinny22 on dual booting this to 9x. Be careful with that Radeon 9800. With the stock cooler, it is very likely to die due to overheating.

Love your photo too. Looks looks like it could have come straight from a 2003 Computer Magazine.

Lovely setup, the silver/beige colour scheme looks great.

I appreciate all your inputs guys. I have another Win 2000 system (Tualatin based), but I guess dual-booting this to Win 98 is a great idea!

And yes, I will replace the stock cooler of the 9800 Pro. This is actually my second 9800 Pro. The first one I got from eBay looked brand new, but it was DOA.

Love it, cool wallpaper too. This one actually makes me miss the early 2000s. I can just picture an Xbox / PS2 and a beanbag chair somewhere else in the room especially with those blue walls.

Love the build and card selection with the 9800. This reminds me of back in 2003 where if you had this machine you would be on the high-end side at that time. 400W was a big step up back then. Looks great!

Recently built a prescott 3.4 @ 3.7, Enermax Liberty 620W, ATI Radeon Sapphire X1950XT, 4 sticks of 1G of DDR OCZ platinum ram, and 2 x 36 gb WD Raptors and a Creative Sound blaster x-fi Titanium sound card.

It's been a lot of fun building these retro machines and playing Doom 3, Far Cry, and finally got a workable early version of Half Life 2 that actually works from the Archive Internet.

It's a real treat to see what others are building and the combination of parts makes each rig interesting in its own right. I am currently waiting on Cedar Mill 651 to pair up with my spare Asus P5GD1 motherboards.

Cheers.

Al

IIRC it's not that trivial making an XP system Dual Boot with Win 98, as it is the other way around. I.e. Co-installing XP on a machine already running W98 is pretty straight forward, as XP recognizes W98 and knows of FAT32 etc.

The other way around, W98 installer does not know of XP, and may not even see partitions, if they're NTFS formatted. So trying installing W98 "on top" of an XP installation might wipe all ..

Hi,

Nice 2k3 build !

The components seem to be from the same period,
Asus P4PE Motherboard > 2002
Intel Pentium 4 HT 3.2ghz Northwood > 2003
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB > 2003
Creative SB0240 Sound Card > 2002
Maxtor DiamondMax 80GB IDE HDD > 2004

Tips :
I use recent cases for better cooling and a real glass window.
Indeed there is better cooling for the microprocessor, it is also important to allow a ventilation of the vrm with it.

What games do you make work with?

sunkindly wrote on 2025-12-10, 22:09:

Love it, cool wallpaper too. This one actually makes me miss the early 2000s. I can just picture an Xbox / PS2 and a beanbag chair somewhere else in the room especially with those blue walls.

At the time, I was playing Final Fantasy X, and it was the same wallpaper I used back then. 😁

I have some retro consoles on the other room including the original Xbox and PS2, but mainly play NES and SNES.

Haustor wrote on 2025-12-11, 09:34:

Hi, […]
Show full quote

Hi,

Nice 2k3 build !

The components seem to be from the same period,
Asus P4PE Motherboard > 2002
Intel Pentium 4 HT 3.2ghz Northwood > 2003
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB > 2003
Creative SB0240 Sound Card > 2002
Maxtor DiamondMax 80GB IDE HDD > 2004

Tips :
I use recent cases for better cooling and a real glass window.
Indeed there is better cooling for the microprocessor, it is also important to allow a ventilation of the vrm with it.

What games do you make work with?

I was actually planning to use a CNPS9500, but I didn't like the vertical orientation, plus the power supply didn't have an intake fan. I'll probably try a different one.

Using today's cases would be nice for cable management and airflow, but I know I won't get much nostalgia if I go that route.

RetroGear1 wrote on 2025-12-11, 03:55:

Recently built a prescott 3.4 @ 3.7, Enermax Liberty 620W, ATI Radeon Sapphire X1950XT, 4 sticks of 1G of DDR OCZ platinum ram, […]
Show full quote

Recently built a prescott 3.4 @ 3.7, Enermax Liberty 620W, ATI Radeon Sapphire X1950XT, 4 sticks of 1G of DDR OCZ platinum ram, and 2 x 36 gb WD Raptors and a Creative Sound blaster x-fi Titanium sound card.

It's been a lot of fun building these retro machines and playing Doom 3, Far Cry, and finally got a workable early version of Half Life 2 that actually works from the Archive Internet.

It's a real treat to see what others are building and the combination of parts makes each rig interesting in its own right. I am currently waiting on Cedar Mill 651 to pair up with my spare Asus P5GD1 motherboards.

Cheers.

Al

The Prescott and X1950XT is an interesting combo. Care to share why Prescott instead of a C2D? I'm assuming this was a 775 platform.

Hi Beeren25, When I initially bought my parts back in Dec of 2004 to build my first pc gaming rig, the local computer store was running a special on a Asus combo mobo/video card - Asus P5GD1/AX600XT PCI-E
Combo https://web.archive.org/web/20041228230214/ht … .com/video.html

After several months, I upgraded to an ATI Radeon Sapphire X800XL and kept that same motherboard and bought an additional exact mobo as a spare. At the end of 2006 the final upgrade was the X1950XT and the ram on the same mobo and did'nt upgrade and ended up retiring the whole thing until last couple of years bringing it from storage.

I realized at that point the processer and mobo were the limiting factor in performance but moved on to consoles for gaming and now I'm back to retro.

Yes, its LGA 775

RetroGear1 wrote on 2025-12-12, 19:52:

Hi Beeren25, When I initially bought my parts back in Dec of 2004 to build my first pc gaming rig, the local computer store w […]
Show full quote

Hi Beeren25, When I initially bought my parts back in Dec of 2004 to build my first pc gaming rig, the local computer store was running a special on a Asus combo mobo/video card - Asus P5GD1/AX600XT PCI-E
Combo https://web.archive.org/web/20041228230214/ht … .com/video.html

After several months, I upgraded to an ATI Radeon Sapphire X800XL and kept that same motherboard and bought an additional exact mobo as a spare. At the end of 2006 the final upgrade was the X1950XT and the ram on the same mobo and did'nt upgrade and ended up retiring the whole thing until last couple of years bringing it from storage.

I realized at that point the processer and mobo were the limiting factor in performance but moved on to consoles for gaming and now I'm back to retro.

That explains it. Back in 2004, I was using a 478 based system and upgraded the GPU three times. ATI Radeon 9250, then 6600GT, then 7600GS. I ended up upgrading to a Conroe based system with PCI-E and used X1950 Pro.

Great job on finding that archived webpage. Really brings back memories.