It is too hot for win98 😀

The GTX560 is considered good for XP, not sure what the 650 will be like although it might require later drivers.

X-Fi or Asus XONAR are best sound cards for XP.

500W+ PSU should be fine, I would probably go 600 to be sure. You don't need the 8gb ram either - 4gb is fine for XP.

Will you dual boot with 64bit Vista/Win7? I wouldn't recommend 64bit XP and 4 CPU cores and 8GB RAM is wasted on XP-32.
The GTX650 is a very good graphics card for XP era games. It has roughly equal performance to the late XP era (before mainstream support ended) enthusiast graphics cards, like the GTX260 and HD4870, but with a lot more modest heat production. Anything other than Crysis will run well in period correct resolutions (1680×1050/1440×1080) maxed out graphics settings. I don't know anything about the sound card. It's made by ASUS, so check if it has any kind of decent EAX support. If not, replace it with a Creative X-fi.

kolderman wrote on 2022-03-03, 05:02:

It is too hot for win98 :) […]
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It is too hot for win98 😀

The GTX560 is considered good for XP, not sure what the 650 will be like although it might require later drivers.

X-Fi or Asus XONAR are best sound cards for XP.

500W+ PSU should be fine, I would probably go 600 to be sure. You don't need the 8gb ram either - 4gb is fine for XP.

My bad, it is a GTX560, updated post. Thank you for the sound card information. I did some looking and the one that came with the board is just basically an audio riser for the onboard chipset. I actually have a Xonar.

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-03-03, 05:05:

Will you dual boot with 64bit Vista/Win7? I wouldn't recommend 64bit XP and 4 CPU cores and 8GB RAM is wasted on XP-32.
The GTX650 is a very good graphics card for XP era games. It has roughly equal performance to the late XP era (before mainstream support ended) enthusiast graphics cards, like the GTX260 and HD4870, but with a lot more modest heat production. Anything other than Crysis will run well in period correct resolutions (1680×1050/1440×1080) maxed out graphics settings. I don't know anything about the sound card. It's made by ASUS, so check if it has any kind of decent EAX support. If not, replace it with a Creative X-fi.

My bad, is a GTX 560. I hadn't thought about dual booting with Vista. Never used the OS but have thought about giving it a try... Thanks!

nncognito wrote on 2022-03-03, 05:18:

My bad, is a GTX 560. I hadn't thought about dual booting with Vista. Never used the OS but have thought about giving it a try... Thanks!

If it's a 560 it's even better. That's roughly GTX295 level of performance without the drawbacks of SLI.
That's around maxed out Crysis in 1080p with 30+ fps.

I've GTX590 in my XP build and can play GTA SA (which I think is the tail end of XP era) with both in game and driver enhancements fully maxed out. I'd think your 560 will be just fine
EAX is WinXP's main selling point as Vista killed this off, the X-fi is indeed the last card with XP support excluding the Titanium HD (non HD cards are fine)

I've a 750w PSU, but that's in a rig with 2 GFX590's couple of spinning rust drives, CD-Rom, X-Fi and few other bits so you can drop it back a bit more

GTA SA is not a very good benchmark for these very late XP era hardware. I play it on an 8800GT and the same CPU OP plans to use with 80 fps maxed out in 1280×1024.
Another ultra modern not exactly retro yet build

Welcome, and nice set of parts there.

I have a Core 2 Quad running Windows XP, and I like it. It is not "period correct" but it works very well. IMO the actual computing experience is superior to the hardware that was available when Windows XP was current (i.e. the Core 2 is faster, has some quality of life improvements, but still compatible with XP). The quality of life improvements include:

• You can use any modern power supply. I suggest actually using/buying a new one, from a reputable brand, with a good warranty. Or a hand-me-down from a recent modern build, if you have one handy. This tier list is a good reference. Wattage isn't as important as internal quality, and for your system 450W is more than enough. If you can find something affordable in the low wattage end of the Tier A, that would be ideal. I understand you've been burned by power supply failure before and that sucks. Fortunately the Core 2 era hardware isn't expensive stuff (maybe that's its own quality of life benefit!) but losing it to PSU failure would still suck.
• Your motherboard allows you to use SATA hard drives and SSDs without IDE adapters. Windows XP on an SSD is hilariously fast and a joy to use (not period correct). This is a great use case for smaller SSDs (maybe under 100 GB) that would be too small for a modern system. Most people feel that TRIM (not natively supported by XP) isn't necessary, but if you want to play it really safe there are older Intel SSDs that support manual TRIM in XP via Intel's SSD toolbox software.
• The system still supports newer operating systems such as Windows 10 x64. So there are opportunities to dual/triple boot if that's what you're interested in. This system running Linux would be a perfectly satisfactory daily driver for light computing tasks.
• This hardware is fast enough to run DOSbox at fullspeed for basically everything DOSbox supports. Obviously this isn't a truly authentic way to play DOS games. But this could be a nice thing if your XP machine has a monitor that works well with 4:3 aspect ratio while your Ryzen system doesn't.

If you are installing Windows XP onto a SATA drive in AHCI mode (set in the BIOS) you will need some tricks to get the appropriate AHCI drivers loaded prior to XP setup. Also if you are trying to install Windows XP from a USB flash drive (instead of optical media) some other tricks are required to get it to work. There are several valid approaches to this... I personally use WinSetupFromUSB with an XP ISO slipstreamed with a pile of drivers.

IMO the joy of an XP gaming machine is for early XP era games that use 4:3 aspect ratio, support hardware accelerated sound (typically EAX), or have issues with later 64-bit editions of Windows. Later XP era games will tend to work fine or possibly better on newer hardware (eg your Ryzen system). So for early XP era games your GTX 560 will be excellent. I could also add that a lot of Windows 98 era games can work in XP with some tweaking/patches (not ideal, but way more feasible than trying to get Win9x games running in Windows 10/11).

I happen to have a motherboard with the SupremeFX sound. It "works" but my experience is that I cannot get Creative EAX support anymore (it requires an online registration for a license that Creative no longer offers). As stated above, in my opinion a key benefit of an XP system is EAX. A Sound Blaster Live, Audigy, or X-Fi card would be superior. Even the relatively lousy "Audigy SE/LS" (which uses software EAX) would be acceptable because your CPU is overpowered for the target era of games. Avoid the newer X-Fi cards which are not XP compatible.

For Windows XP, which is a 32-bit OS (XP x64 is another story), 4GB of memory is all you need. You could remove two of those sticks for possible improvements in overclocking stability, or to use elsewhere. If you are multi-booting with a 64-bit OS you can keep all the memory installed - XP will still boot fine (it will just ignore the extra memory it can't use).

And lastly... people on the internet don't get to decide if your build has style, soul, rhyme or reason. You do! I hope you enjoy the build, and the hobby!

I have a Core 2 Quad running Windows XP, and I like it. It is not "period correct"

WIndows XP SP3 was released in 2008, so it is period correct.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-03-04, 18:24:

WIndows XP SP3 was released in 2008, so it is period correct.

Nice. Yeah so in 2008, Windows Vista had been available for a year and Windows XP was still supported. I actually was one of the people putting together a brand new Core 2 Quad system in 2008 and I installed Vista. Probably most people at the time (but not all) did as well. At that point XP had been around for ~7 years.

I have encountered folks who have a much narrower definition of "period correct" than you do, but yes certainly a Q6600 aligns with Windows XP's conventional life a lot closer than say... a Haswell.

Yeah, but Vista didn't really have a period. It never reached 20% market share and not many people used it willingly. When Win7 released it didn't take a year for its market share to grow past Vista, but it took 3 years to overtake XP.

I have encountered folks who have a much narrower definition of "period correct"

Which is ridiculous and has nothing to do with how computers are used in real world.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-03-04, 20:08:

I have encountered folks who have a much narrower definition of "period correct"

Which is ridiculous and has nothing to do with how computers are used in real world.

Instead of starting an argument with folks who are not me, who I don't really agree with anyways, how about we use this thread to help the OP?

Anybody know anything about the SupremeFX II sound card that came with the board? Would some type of sound blaster be better?

These addon cards are not based on Creative DSP chips. That's Creative SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio clone, which is just a glorified codec, which just happens to support software EAX.

bZbZbZ wrote on 2022-03-04, 17:05:

Welcome, and nice set of parts there. […]
Show full quote

Welcome, and nice set of parts there.

I have a Core 2 Quad running Windows XP, and I like it. It is not "period correct" but it works very well. IMO the actual computing experience is superior to the hardware that was available when Windows XP was current (i.e. the Core 2 is faster, has some quality of life improvements, but still compatible with XP). The quality of life improvements include:

• You can use any modern power supply. I suggest actually using/buying a new one, from a reputable brand, with a good warranty. Or a hand-me-down from a recent modern build, if you have one handy. This tier list is a good reference. Wattage isn't as important as internal quality, and for your system 450W is more than enough. If you can find something affordable in the low wattage end of the Tier A, that would be ideal. I understand you've been burned by power supply failure before and that sucks. Fortunately the Core 2 era hardware isn't expensive stuff (maybe that's its own quality of life benefit!) but losing it to PSU failure would still suck.
• Your motherboard allows you to use SATA hard drives and SSDs without IDE adapters. Windows XP on an SSD is hilariously fast and a joy to use (not period correct). This is a great use case for smaller SSDs (maybe under 100 GB) that would be too small for a modern system. Most people feel that TRIM (not natively supported by XP) isn't necessary, but if you want to play it really safe there are older Intel SSDs that support manual TRIM in XP via Intel's SSD toolbox software.
• The system still supports newer operating systems such as Windows 10 x64. So there are opportunities to dual/triple boot if that's what you're interested in. This system running Linux would be a perfectly satisfactory daily driver for light computing tasks.
• This hardware is fast enough to run DOSbox at fullspeed for basically everything DOSbox supports. Obviously this isn't a truly authentic way to play DOS games. But this could be a nice thing if your XP machine has a monitor that works well with 4:3 aspect ratio while your Ryzen system doesn't.

If you are installing Windows XP onto a SATA drive in AHCI mode (set in the BIOS) you will need some tricks to get the appropriate AHCI drivers loaded prior to XP setup. Also if you are trying to install Windows XP from a USB flash drive (instead of optical media) some other tricks are required to get it to work. There are several valid approaches to this... I personally use WinSetupFromUSB with an XP ISO slipstreamed with a pile of drivers.

IMO the joy of an XP gaming machine is for early XP era games that use 4:3 aspect ratio, support hardware accelerated sound (typically EAX), or have issues with later 64-bit editions of Windows. Later XP era games will tend to work fine or possibly better on newer hardware (eg your Ryzen system). So for early XP era games your GTX 560 will be excellent. I could also add that a lot of Windows 98 era games can work in XP with some tweaking/patches (not ideal, but way more feasible than trying to get Win9x games running in Windows 10/11).

I happen to have a motherboard with the SupremeFX sound. It "works" but my experience is that I cannot get Creative EAX support anymore (it requires an online registration for a license that Creative no longer offers). As stated above, in my opinion a key benefit of an XP system is EAX. A Sound Blaster Live, Audigy, or X-Fi card would be superior. Even the relatively lousy "Audigy SE/LS" (which uses software EAX) would be acceptable because your CPU is overpowered for the target era of games. Avoid the newer X-Fi cards which are not XP compatible.

For Windows XP, which is a 32-bit OS (XP x64 is another story), 4GB of memory is all you need. You could remove two of those sticks for possible improvements in overclocking stability, or to use elsewhere. If you are multi-booting with a 64-bit OS you can keep all the memory installed - XP will still boot fine (it will just ignore the extra memory it can't use).

And lastly... people on the internet don't get to decide if your build has style, soul, rhyme or reason. You do! I hope you enjoy the build, and the hobby!

Thanks for all the information especially how to actually get XP installed on there. I'm not big on period correct but I'm not trying to recreate my modern desktop main rig either!

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-03-04, 21:45:

Anybody know anything about the SupremeFX II sound card that came with the board? Would some type of sound blaster be better?

These addon cards are not based on Creative DSP chips. That's Creative SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio clone, which is just a glorified codec, which just happens to support software EAX.

I have a couple of Audigy 2 ZS, a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 and a Asus Xonar, and I may pick up a X-Fi just because they are so recommended. Will disable onboard audio, thanks for the information.

Got a little work done over the weekend. Still waiting on a power supply to get here to get serious with it. After getting the Thermaltake V1 CPU cooler mounted I'm having second thoughts. It's kind of an eye sore to me. Not going to be overclocking so thinking about using a stock style orb cooler instead. Thinking about using the SSD for the operating system drive and a 500GB hard drive to install the games to. But may end up getting a larger SSD to install OS and games to if everything is feeling sluggish.

I forgot my Xonar was setup for a half height card and can't currently find the other piece that makes it full height so have installed the Audigy 2 ZS. But may order a X-FI anyway. I have a hard time deciding on a plan of action sometimes !

nncognito wrote:

I have a couple of Audigy 2 ZS, a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 and a Asus Xonar, and I may pick up a X-Fi just because they are so recommended. Will disable onboard audio, thanks for the information.

From EAX perspective, Audigy 2 ZS will work just fine. X-Fi has better better positional audio (CMSS), especially with headphones, and can work with 44kHz rate without crude audio resampling (Achilles' heel of pre-X-Fi chips). Also, most normal PCI X-Fi cards can be also expanded with external audio block from X-Fi Elite, unlike Audigy 2 ZS. And well, you aslo have an option to buy PCIe X-Fi, should you need PCI slots for something else.