I built up a Sandy Bridge Core i3 in an old Dell case to experiment with BeOS R5. Here are the base specs:
Core i3-2120 (3.3 Ghz, 2 Cores, 4 Threads)
Asus P8Q67-M Micro-ATX Motherboard
4 GB DDR3-1333 RAM
Sound Blaster 64 PCI Sound
Generic NEC PCI-E 5-Port USB 1.1/2.0 (OHCI/EHCI)
2x 24x DVD+/-RW Drives (SATA)
KingDian 32 GB SSD (SATA)
Corsair CV650 Power Supply
This is turning into a bit of an idiosyncratic machine. BeOS refuses to boot if I specify a PCI or PCI-E video card as primary, but it will boot if I set integrated graphics to primary. If I have a Matrox Millennium installed (either in a PCI slot or PCI-E to PCI adapter), video on the integrated graphics freezes and BeOS switches to displaying out of the Millennium after the boot-up sound. It does this with my GeForce 6800 GS (PCI-E) as well, but the 6800 doesn’t put out a display (just a blank screen). I haven’t gotten any other PCI-E video cards to work at all.
I reprogramed the BIOS a couple of years ago to add a 1080p VESA mode to the integrated Intel graphics. It works with most generic VESA drivers in other operating systems, but it never displayed 1080p properly in BeOS when I used a VESA mode setting patch (it would only produce a 640x480 desktop in the upper left-hand corner of the screen). Today, though, I discovered that I can get a proper 1080p desktop (see screenshot) from the integrated graphics if I set “Use Fail-safe Video Mode” from a BeOS safe-mode boot menu. Weird!
Now, I’m waiting on a NOS PCI network card to arrive so I can get this modern BeBox online.