Nice build! Perhaps you're golden with the Philips PCRW1208 (and a few other models like PCRW2010) that might match the silver front. There are also NEC Optiarc's out there with a silver front which might be a tad or two darker in color.

Nice build! Cute little monitor.

Very nice. I'm still looking for a suiting case for my build. My 5ali61 with and k6-2+@500 MHz is unhappy in a case from ca 2005. That and a voodoo card but they are both equally stupidly expensive in my area.

Very nice!

I like the combination of black-beige-silver-gold regarding your front panel.

That's a great looking system inside and out. Your selection of parts is fantastic it's very well though out and I'd bet all the games perform very well.

Thanks for the nice comments! 😀

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-05-08, 17:40:

Nice build! Cute little monitor.

It's a 17" CRT and is almost as high as the case itself, although the photo angle makes it seem smaller.

I've also managed to find a proper solution for the CDROM unit. I took this pretty generic looking drive I had laying around and reprayed it with metallic silver and gold paint.

For the smaller bits I used gold and silver markers, such as the 40x lettering and the headphones\volume icons.

And here's what it looks like in the case 😀

That looks really good. Nice job

I was thinking you should get one of those old 4x Philips cd writers in gold and black but that's also cool. I agree nice job.

Joakim wrote on 2021-05-11, 20:49:

I was thinking you should get one of those old 4x Philips cd writers in gold and black but that's also cool. I agree nice job.

Thandor suggested a few of them in his post above but I wasn't able to find one locally for a reasonable price. And a CDROM drive is quite the must in such a system, so I didn't want to wait for weeks/months to finally source one. So the spraycan was the quick and easy solution.

Rummaging around my parts bin I found another small upgrade for the machine.

The Audigy ZS 2 has a header for a game/midi port connector, so why not make use of that? As you can see, I took off the USB part of the bracket, since this motherboard doesn't have a USB header. Seems a bit strange for that era.. but it has 2 USB connections in the I/O so that's good enough for me.

I finally got around to doing the most important part after building a retro PC: tune it and put it through some benchmarks!

Before I'll try any overclocking, I'm adding a 40mm fan to my Voodoo 3 2000. The heatsink is glued on and doesn't have any fan connectors or inserts, so you'd need to take off the entire heatsink and replace it with a new unit. Or, you can get creative and mount the fan to the heatsink with a few wires. The wires go below the heatsink (next to the glued thermal pad) and through the mounting holes of the fan. The fan is really light so it'll hang in there pretty well. If you do this, be sure not to let the wires touch any of the components around the heatsink.

For the Benchmarks I'm using Quake II (v 3.20 with glminidrv 1.49, @ 1024x768, high details, demo1.dm2), Unreal (Gold Edition, 800x600, high details, castle flyby demo) and 3DMark 99 MAX (800x600, default settings). Quake II and Unreal both had high quality sound on while running.

Settings #1: Stock (100 Mhz FSB, 450 Mhz & Voodoo 3 @ 143 Mhz)
- Quake II : 67,7 FPS
- Unreal: 59,0 FPS
- 3DMarks: 3310
- CPUMarks: 4283

Settings #2: CPU Overclock (112 Mhz FSB, 502 Mhz & Voodoo 3 @ 143 Mhz)
- Quake II : 67,9 FPS
- Unreal: 62,8 FPS
- 3DMarks: 3762
- CPUMarks: 4914

Settings #3: CPU & GPU Overclock (112 Mhz FSB, 502 Mhz & Voodoo 3 @ 166 Mhz)
- Quake II : 79,2 FPS
- Unreal: 66,7 FPS
- 3DMarks: 3796
- CPUMarks: 4998

The PC runs stable with acceptable temps with setting #3. I'm happy I was able to push my V3 2000 all the way to the stock speed of a V3 3000. Going up to 175 Mhz started giving me errors and artifacts, so I think 166 Mhz is a fair point to settle on. It seems Quake II benefits the most from the extra boost to the videocard, but adding extra power to the CPU did next to nothing. It gives Unreal some extra frames but 3Dmark99 benefits most from this CPU boost. I find 3dMark99 to be a bit unstable when it comes to results. It's mostly best to take the average out of 3 or 5 runs to get a good feeling for the impact of the overclock.

Anyway, pretty happy with the system in it's current state! If anyone has any suggestions for upgrades or got some games I should try (especially with surround sound and EAX!) let me know!

Those are fantastic results excellent job. You really made a great system.

I found a decent list of EAX games.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games … ith_EAX_support

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-05-13, 19:24:

I found a decent list of EAX games.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games … ith_EAX_support

Thanks for that list! I've also found this list with games that feature surround sound:

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_gam … _surround_sound

Also this:
https://satsun.org/audio/

I'm very eager to try Conflict Freespace. It's one of my favourite games and it also does EAX.

Nice find with the surround sound list. That is a fun game and would be a nice test for EAX.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-05-16, 04:09:

That is a fun game and would be a nice test for EAX.

It certainly is!

Hooked up my old QuickShot joystick there from 1990. I used to play Freespace with keyboard only so it's been tricky trying to adapt to joystick controls but it's adding to the immersion. The 3d audio with EAX effects is fantastic! You can hear enemy ships buzzing around you or that lock on sound behind you when the supply ship docks to your vessel. Just awesome.

I read that Operation Flashpoint (from 2001) also featured 3d sound so I gave that a shot but my PC only barely makes the minimal requirements. It's only somewhat playable on the lowest resolution with absolutely all details to very low or off. Going from a kick-ass system in 1999 to COMPLETELY OBSOLETE within 2 years isn't something I miss about retro gaming 🤣.

I'd best stick to something =<2000 if I want to have an enjoyable experience. If anyone has some more titles to suggest, I'm all ears 😀

That's a great looking setup you have there.

Just as a small issue I've found with the mobo (I also have the 7BXAN, not sure about the revision, think it's a 2.1?) - should you ever want to go Win2000 at any point, ACPI support is pretty buggy or even nonexistent.

At least mine will act like an AT machine under 2000, and ATX under 9x/ME - 2000 will actually show the "It's now safe to turn off the computer" while 9x/ME shutdown normally.

I am not sure what causes this - either the BIOS is not fully ACPI compliant, or the ACPI side is broken.

PcBytes wrote on 2021-05-29, 06:50:

Just as a small issue I've found with the mobo (I also have the 7BXAN, not sure about the revision, think it's a 2.1?) - should you ever want to go Win2000 at any point, ACPI support is pretty buggy or even nonexistent.

At least mine will act like an AT machine under 2000, and ATX under 9x/ME - 2000 will actually show the "It's now safe to turn off the computer" while 9x/ME shutdown normally.

I am not sure what causes this - either the BIOS is not fully ACPI compliant, or the ACPI side is broken.

I have not experienced that myself, but I've never used Win2000 before. As 1998/1999 is the target for this build, putting Win2000 on it seems a bit strange. If I were to build an early 2000's build, Win XP would be my OS of choice. But as you mentioned, Win98 SE is just fine when it comes to ATX shut down.

The board seems to be ACPI compliant as the manual suggests:

• ACPI supporting for OS Directed Power Management. Ring-ln Wake up: When Ring-In the system can wake up from SMI Mode. Ring […]
Show full quote

• ACPI supporting for OS Directed Power Management.
Ring-ln Wake up: When Ring-In the system can wake up from SMI Mode.
Ring-ln Power On: When Ring-In the system can power on automatic by this function.
RTC Power On: Enabled RTC Power On function, you can setting RTC alarm to power on the system at the time length you setting.
Power Button: Press the button will place the system power on/off.
CPU fan auto-stopping when in suspend mode.
Support Software Power Off function.

Maybe the Win2000 implementation is somewhat different or incompatible. This would be very suprising, though.

I've attached the manual for those interested. I recall this was tricky to come by.