🤣 It's a total mess on the inside, I really suck at cable management but in my defense these sheathed PSU wires are a real pain to bend.

The picture is at a weird angle because it was taken when I just got finished assembling the inside, this was basically just a photo I took to remember what a shitty job of cable management I had done. 🤣

Also here is a picture of the Power light (Green) and the HDD light (Orange) in action just to show how awesomely 90's this case really is.
At first I had the LED's plugged in backwards so I was only getting an orange light on the power indicator (sleep mode light?) but now that I flipped the polarity on them they are working perfectly. 😁

I borrowed my Packard Bell's monitor for a quick photo shoot of what it will look like when I get a proper CRT. 🤣

I must say other than the crappyness of this monitor I really like this. 😁

I stuff the ATX power cable between the case and the CD-ROM 😀

Hmm, I'm going to have to try that! I didn't even think of that when I was putting it together. 🤣

It's a DVD RW drive btw, I just disguised it with a faceplate from a Packard Bell CD-ROM circa 1996. 😜

really cool system. How about a 3.5" beige floppy drive to complete it?

Yeah I'm looking for one, believe it or not I currently don't have one laying around. 🤣

(Deleted. No longer relevant anyway)

The monitor is not actually original to the Packard Bell, it is a Samsung SyncMaster 753DF I got for free a little while ago, it's just the CRT I use with my retro PC since in my opinion older operating systems and games look better on a slightly fuzzy crt. 😜

The cool part about the freebee is that it goes up to 1280x1024 though which (albeit being hard to read) is nice for multitasking.

Woah, awesome!

Wow I thought this was a crappy monitor because it's fuzzy with text and such BUT HOLY COW on video games its freaking amazing, gone are all those Jagged lines and edges that you see on an LCD monitor. 😳

I just started up GTA IV to see if it looked any different and WOW IT BLEW ME AWAY. Why the hell did they ever stop making crt? 🤣 THIS IS AMAZING I completely forgot how good CRTs look for video games. 😁

King_Corduroy wrote:

The monitor is not actually original to the Packard Bell, it is a Samsung SyncMaster 753DF I got for free a little while ago, it's just the CRT I use with my retro PC since in my opinion older operating systems and games look better on a slightly fuzzy crt. 😜

The cool part about the freebee is that it goes up to 1280x1024 though which (albeit being hard to read) is nice for multitasking.

I actually used to use one of those as my main monitor. I agree, it's not the greatest CRT ever made, not by a longshot. 🤣

King_Corduroy wrote:

Wow I thought this was a crappy monitor because it's fuzzy with text

It shouldn't be, with a 0.20mm horizontal dot pitch 😳

King_Corduroy wrote:

and such BUT HOLY COW on video games its freaking amazing, gone are all those Jagged lines and edges that you see on an LCD monitor. 😳

Now try that again on 800x600 at 160Hz... And be amazed a second time 😀 (to quote my cousin seeing his favourite game in 160Hz for the first time: "This is like real life!!!")

Lol

Seriously though it really is weird how big of a difference it makes when playing 3D games. The first game I tried on this monitor was Dark Forces on my Packard Bell, I was totally blown away. Instead of looking like a flat image on a screen it seemed to have depth, the walls looked much more... well... 3D! 🤣

It's no wonder games stopped having much of an appeal after I bought an LCD and threw out my CRT monitors. 😜

King_Corduroy wrote:

Wow I thought this was a crappy monitor because it's fuzzy with text and such BUT HOLY COW on video games its freaking amazing, gone are all those Jagged lines and edges that you see on an LCD monitor. 😳

I just started up GTA IV to see if it looked any different and WOW IT BLEW ME AWAY. Why the hell did they ever stop making crt? 🤣 THIS IS AMAZING I completely forgot how good CRTs look for video games. 😁

one of my CRTs is this but, it's actually because it has brightness problem due to a glitch in the firmware that keeps raising the G2 voltage.

Yeah I have an Acer that has that problem, it's not horrible to use though (certainly no worse than an LCD). Eventually I hope to get a manual CRT.

Completed my last S775 upgrade a few days ago.

Xeon 3230/Core Q6700
Radeon HD4870X2
4Gb DDR2-800 (I'm looking for another set of 2x2Gb)
ASUS P5K (P35 chip set)
Seagate 1Tb 5k RPM HDD
ASUS PCI-N10 Wireless card
Corsair Force LS 128MB SSD
Fractal Design Core 2500 case
Corsair RM750 PSU
ASUS DVD-RW (SATA)

I bought the last four positions some time ago thinking that I would be happy with them in case I decide to build a new PC within 5-7 years 😀 The last picture is this rig with its little 486-based buddy. It's funny how ASUS did not change their drive design within 15 years! 1999 CD-R on the left, 2014 DVD-RW on the right.

Here's an album of my current desktop: https://imgur.com/a/x5qgy

Specs:
- Intel Core i5-3470 @ 3.2GHz (Ivy Bridge)
- AsRock B75 Pro3-M
- 8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 CL9
- Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 Boost 3GB
- Be Quiet! Dark Rock 3
- Samsung 840 Series 120GB SSD
- WD Black 1TB
- Corsair CS650M PSU
- Silverstone TJ08-EW Case

I'd like my next upgrade to be a Z97 mobo with an unlocked i5 and dual GTX970s in SLI, but that might be a fair way off. Next planned upgrade is a 250GB SSD, and the 120GB will go in my HTPC.

In terms of peripherals, I use 3x Viewsonic 23" 1080p LCDs on a custom wall mount, a Ducky Zero DK2087 with MX Blues, a Razer Deathadder 3.5G, Logitech Z523 2.1 speakers and a XB360 wireless controller.

Hi RacoonRider, in the 3rd pic that you posted, your 2x2GB ram has to be on the same coloured slots for dual channel to be utilised (i.e. DIMM 1 and 3 or DIMM 2 and 4). Right now your current config is running in single channel mode. Just a friendly FYI. 😀

Also interesting is the way your PSU is mounted, with the fan facing upwards. Usually, most people have theirs facing downwards to pull in cooler air from outside the case.

Zenn wrote:

Hi RacoonRider, in the 3rd pic that you posted, your 2x2GB ram has to be on the same coloured slots for dual channel to be utilised (i.e. DIMM 1 and 3 or DIMM 2 and 4). Right now your current config is running in single channel mode. Just a friendly FYI. 😀

Also interesting is the way your PSU is mounted, with the fan facing upwards. Usually, most people have theirs facing downwards to pull in cooler air from outside the case.

Thanks for your advice! I used to think otherwise 😊 The PSU fan is off 90% of the time, so it does not really matter how I set it.

RacoonRider: 4870X2 is a very neat card. While I don't miss the fan noise, I'm still kind of bummed that mine developed issues. It did a great job with anything I threw at it, even fairly new games like Hitman Absolution or Mass Effect 3, and handled higher-level AA (16x and above) in even semi-recent games like Oblivion without much trouble. Something I noted on both of my 4800s, and I'm not sure if this will be true of your card or not, is that the built-in clock management (which will drop the GPUs down to around 500MHz at idle) would not engage at default settings, but manually over- or under-clocking them by 1MHz would somehow get this working. It doesn't make any difference in 3D performance or temperatures, but it can lower idle temperatures a good bit. I vaguely remember Tom's Hardware showing that engaging a 3D application (Aero not working) would also force the clock management to work, and that the X2 played along with that, but that's kind of annoying to do every time the machine is started (unless you leave the machine on all the time so that this wouldn't be a common thing).

I'd also probably move that WiFi card away from the X2 if you can - the X2 will get very warm when running in 3D, and it will heat up things around it (and we aren't talking insubstantially - it sheds enough heat that it could warm my idle 4890 enough to force that one's fan to spin up, and it's certainly nothing you want to touch right after it's been cranking in 3D for hours).

Still a very cool build that brings back some memories, and should be very solid even with newer games.